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February 09, 2006
It's just lunch
There's this dating service that runs around the country called "It's Just Lunch!" which apparently is geared towards busy professional people, of which I am not one. But I only really know about it because they used to have their ads in all kinds of newspapers, and one of their regional directors is a lady by the name of P.J. Osgood. Needless to say, that caught my eye.
So, in the Tribune today they interviewed some other lady who invented a "meal date seriousness scale," which purports to correlate the type of meal with the seriousness of one's relationship. This scale is nothing but a crock of shit.
It goes like this (from not-serious to walk-down-the-aisle-serious):
Juice at the gym
Coffee
Breakfast
Dessert
Afternoon Tea
Lunch
Brunch
Drinks
Dinner
Wine tasting
Now wait just a god damn minute. There is NO way lunch, drinks, or dinner is more serious than breakfast. It's impossible.
Here's why: if you're going to breakfast with somebody, you're seeing that person somewhat early in the morning. People do not meet for a first date and decide, hey, let's get up at 9 am and have breakfast. When you're at breakfast, it's because that person has slept over, or in the very least, you have a somewhat established relationship with that person. I don't know much about women, but I do know that they think they look like shit in the morning. Do you really think they want your very first date to be one where you go to Denny's in your PJ's and eat a Grand Slam? Putting breakfast so low on the scale seriously damages this woman's credibility, if you ask me.
And juice at the gym? Is that really even a date? You may wrangle somebody into having one of those awful protein shakes with you at the gym, but I would not qualify it as a date per se. It's more of an encounter. However, the juice at the gym could well be used as a springboard to garner an actual date, perhaps for the afore-mentioned coffee.
On the other hand, I don't know why this wine tasting thing is tops on the seriousness scale. To me, that is more of a impress your date kind of thing. Sure, wine's good and all, and despite the popularity of "Sideways," unless you are Frasier Crane, wine tasting is probably not your idea of a good time. But it is the kind of thing I think a guy might decide to pull off if he thinks it will impress his date. If you've been dating for awhile, you go to the wine tasting ostensibly to appear cultured, but in reality as an excuse to get your girlfriend drunk so she's easy. (Hey Christy, want to go to a wine tasting?) This is why I would not rank wine tasting near the top.
But really, such things do not justify an easy ranking system. There are degrees of meal. What kind of dinner are we concerned with? What restaurant is it? What time? What day? (Dinner on Saturday > Dinner on Monday, no?) So, in my estimation, this kind of thing defies ranking. Nevertheless, I will attempt to redo these rankings. Also, I've added a "degree of seriousness" ranking, so as to attempt to quantify exactly how serious all this is. Also, I firmly believe that this is a "minimum value" sort of thing, so that if you have managed to, say, get a person to go to lunch with you, you can also theoretically get that same person to do anything with a lower value than that (eg drinks, breakfast.) But, I cannot guarantee that a person who agrees to lunch will also agree to dinner, because dinner is greater than lunch. See what I mean?
0.7 Juice at the Gym - I don't even know what to say.
1.0 Coffee - the default generic date.
1.5 Drinks - Alcohol = social lubricant. Need I say more?
1.6 Lunch - It's lunch, it's in the middle of the day, and you can easily escape from a lunch date.
3.3 Dinner - Standard date fare, if you're at dinner you're not exactly in danger of putting Don Juan out of business.
4.5 Dessert - Now you're getting somewhere, because clearly you want to stick around each other, or you want to fatten her up to cook and eat her (wicked witches only.) Bumped up to 5.0 if you're SHARING the dessert.
5.1 Afternoon tea - You must really like this girl, you sissy.
5.2 Wine tasting - Dude... you're embarassing yourself.
7.4 Breakfast - Holla!!! Atta boy!
8.2 Brunch - Whoah. The only thing more serious than this is the buffet at the casino after your shotgun wedding. Not only has she slept over, you're hanging out with her enough that you've formed a combo lunch and breakfast in order to kill Sunday afternoon. Perhaps during this meal is the right time to write out all your thank you notes and put together a joing Christmas card list!
Posted by oz115 at February 9, 2006 10:44 AM
Comments
Oh honey, let's do brunch!
So what's the seriousness of OUR relationship my love? We skipped right over coffee, juice.... hmmm....
Tehe... And honey, you don't have to get me drunk to get in my pants... whenever you want my love
XOXOXO
Christy
Posted by: Christy Your Love! at February 11, 2006 08:23 AM