Sang's Dating Marathon

Ch 1: The Checklist

It’s Thursday and I just finished my last midterm.  Finally, I am free from school work, studying and cramming my brain with information I will only forget come Monday.  I am going to use this time to relax reading my favorite books, listen to some new music and binge watch the past season of Game of Thrones.

Right as I’m about to start my weekend of relaxation I hear my roommate come through the door like a tornado in Texas and instantly I know my plans are about to be put on the back burner.

“Saaanngg!!  Sang where are yyyoouu?”, Karen sing-songs into the living room.

“Hey Karen, what has you so happy?”

Karen just recently broke up with her girlfriend of two years and has been moping around the apartment looking pathetic and depressed.  Just yesterday she was so out of it she went to class dressed in basketball shorts and a t-shirt---that wasn’t the worst part.  The shorts were inside out and backwards.  Inside out!!  AND Backwards!!!  How does that happen?  I understand sometimes you put things on inside out because the seam blends into the material, but backwards?!?  With the tag hanging in the front?!?  She was a zombie, a lesbian zombie to be more precise.  So this complete 180 has me shaking in my boots.  When Karen gets in one of these crazy happy moods things go wrong.  Somehow she always ropes me into the “adventure” as she calls them.  Me?  I call it turning us into Lucy and Ethel.  Yes, that’s how much trouble we get into.

Karen flops onto the couch next to me as I ask her the question and she replies, “Well Sang, I’m glad you noticed”  Hard not to “I just came up with the perfect way to fix all our problems!”

“Problems?  What problems do we have?”

“Your dry spell and my breakupwithtammy”, she mumbles the last part like she doesn’t want to say her ex’s name.  I learned my lesson on that; Karen would start bawling every time I would bring up Tammy’s name.

“Umm, Karen.  I’m not in a dry spell.”

“Yes, you are Sang!  You haven’t gone out on any dates.”

“Yes, I have!  I went out with Josh.  Remember?  He took me to that sushi restaurant for dinner.”

Karen leans in closer and gives me sympathetic look while speaking in a tone that implies she thinks I might break with the news she’s about to give me, “Sang, that was last year.”  She pats my knee and continues, “The dictionary says a dry spell occurs when you have not gone out on a date for 4-6 months.  It’s been a year so that actually means you are in a drought.”

“The dictionary doesn’t say that!”  Has it really been that long since I went out?  I start to feel like Karen is onto something, until I look at the devious smirk she has plastered on her face.  I tell her, “Nope!! Not doing it!  Whatever you have planned count me out.  I may be in a dry spell...”

“Drought”, she interjects with.

“Fine. Drought, but I am not desperate enough to get into whatever trouble you have brewing.”

“It’s just a dating marathon checklist!!  Look.”, Karen hands me a piece of paper with a bunch of checkboxes and things to do over this Friday, Saturday and Sunday.  Wow.  I’m impressed she took the time to type this up.

I start to read off some of the items aloud, “Speed dating, go on a blind date, pick up someone at the gym, play sexy truth or dare at a nightclub, accept a date from an online dating website...Karen why do we have to do all this stuff?”

“Lets call it practice for you and rebounding for me.  I don’t see the word trouble anywhere in there.”

“Funny because I see trouble written all over this checklist.”  I give a huge sigh and tell her, “Fine, I’ll do your stupid dating marathon checklist thingy, but only because you need to move on and this will get your mind off of you know who.”

Karen squeals and jumps on me to give me a bear hug. “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!  We are going to have so much fun!!!”