Bad Call

Probably the worst part of dating is the first phone call. That’s the stage where you feel like you have the most to lose. You’ve already impressed the girl enough for her to give you her number, so you know she’s interested. The trick now is to be charming enough over the phone that she’s still convinced she wants to get to know you.

This is usually the place I end up shooting myself in the foot. Chances are that her number’s been burning a hole in my pocket for three days and I’ve thought of nothing but what to say and how to act. This is why I don’t succeed. One of my biggest problems is over-analyzing situations. So I’ll walk around for three days thinking up things to say, and then call the girl and nothing will go as planned.

Or even worse, I’ll get the voicemail. I don’t have a whole lot of filtering between my head and my mouth, but the problem is only exacerbated by nervousness. Translation: I’m usually that guy who calls and leaves babbling, semi-coherent messages on a girl’s machine. Some girls find it endearing. Most do not.

Example:

“Hi Cindy. It’s Ehren. The kid from the club a few nights ago. Not that you probably know a whole lot of Ehrens. Well guy Ehrens. There are a lot of girl Ehrens that you might or might not know out there…but I’m not one of them. I mean, you know me, but I’m not a girl. Anyway, I was thinking that it would be cool to go…what the devil are the kids doing these days? Um…Hang out at the Box Social together. So you can get in touch with me through Bat Signal, Vulcan Mind-Meld, Astral Projection, or you could be conventional about things and call me back. Here’s my number. Hibye!"

Generally, I’ll give the girl two days and if I don’t hear back I’ll call once more. That’s it. I figure that if she’s not calling back after that, further messages aren’t going to help. What would help? Sending dead puppies. Girls like dead things, right? Damn, I’m smooth.

I’ve discovered that I’m far better when I don’t have time to obsess over these things. Last night I made a snap decision to call a girl with no preparation what so ever. And things went fantastic. Granted, I still rambled a whole lot and probably scared her off when I granted her request for a complete dating history. But all in all, I think it went well. Hey, I consider it to be a rounding success to only slightly freak a girl out.