Top Ten Geekiest Dates

The following are the winners in the Geekiest Date Contest.

They are ranked in order. The entries were judged based primarily on the actual geekiness of the date. Humor and irony were considered, but, in the end, it was the geekiness of the date itself that won the day for this entry.

# 1

When I was 17, my father fixed me up with his boss’s son. I was still an awkward teen myself, but I paled in comparison to this boy. He was 3 inches shorter than I (I’m 5’7" tall), had thick glasses, of course, wore a white button-down short-sleeved shirt with a stain on it, buttoned all the way to the top button, and, yes, a pocket protector. Inside the pocket protector, in addition to the requisite ball point pens and highlighters of many colors was a small slide rule.

Even though he was 18, he didn’t drive. As he explained, he had flunked Driver’s Ed because he couldn’t master the co-ordination of his brain and his feet. He told me he had crashed two of the school’s training cars. So his dad drove us.

We went to his friend’s house who was hosting a chess match. There were eight boys there (including my date), and many of them made my date seem less geeky. I was the only girl there. Since I didn’t know anything about chess, it was like watching paint dry. The only excitement was when someone said something like "aha!" Yes, ‘aha’, as in "you’re trying the (something I don’t remember) opening, that’ll never work". But, I was the only girl there. And that made me want to learn chess, and everybody offered to teach me. I never got very good, and those geeks would never let me win, curse them. Nevertheless, I started enjoying watching these matches. I dated three of them off and on, and became a "chess groupie". I think it made me feel special that I was, for the first time in my young life, a desirable date.

Since that time, I have gravitated more and more towards geeky guys. They appreciate me, and even though I am no longer so awkward, I feel like the geeky ones are much better, more sincere people.

Everything is relative, and this date proved it. I’ve always consider myself geeky, with a past of playing D&D and rock collecting, and current interests including Spongebob Squarepants and a Playmobil collection. But I discovered there are definitely layers to this stereotype. On a warm Spring weekend I made plans to meet up with someone I’d been getting to know online. I was about 30 and so was he. I gave him the choice of location, and he selected the Newseum (at the time located in Alexandria, currently closed until it moves to DC). And no, that’s not a typo, it’s an interactive museum dedicated to news. Since I gave him the choice, I didn’t mention that short of NPR, I’m much more likely to frequent the Cartoonseum. However, they had a special moon landing exhibit, and I figured that might be interesting.

It was a warm day so I opted for jean shorts and a sleeveless top, figuring that was casual, but not sloppy. Initially, I thought he was a Mormon approaching me to promote the faith, but without a bicycle; it dawned on me that this was my date. He wore dark navy slacks and a button-down short-sleeve shirt. I remember it was short-sleeve, because he was wearing mismatched elbow pads – one white and one blue. He didn’t give me an explanation for these accessories, so I didn’t ask.

As we walked around the museum he repeatedly adjusted the elbow pads, which I discovered, to my dismay, were made of Velcro. Velcro isn’t very quiet in a museum. Nothing is very quiet in a museum, but especially Velcro. It was enough to cause one museum employee to approach us and ask, "Man, I just HAVE to know, what ARE those things for?" And I learned he had tennis elbows. When I couldn’t track him by the crackling sound of Velcro, I’d occasionally lose him around the stand-alone columns of newsworthy events. Turning, I occasionally found him right behind me, causing me to jump. I told him it startled me and he smiled a knowing smile and replied "Yes, I have friends who tell me I should wear a bell".

In the gift shop, we made small talk and at some point he made a joke about my daughter’s name that he found incredibly funny. He laughed loud enough that everyone in the store stopped what they were looking at to watch us instead. I made a quick exit for the door when he suggested dinner. So he took me to Subway, where he drank his bag of potato chips… which might have been an issue with his elbows, so I ignored the stares.

After the date, he emailed to suggest getting together again. Being new at the dating arena I didn’t know the nicest way to say I wasn’t interested. I ended up saying it was a height issue and that I preferred dating men my height or taller, thinking this was the most polite thing I could think of. I was wrong. I received a 5 page dissertation on the hunter gatherer logic behind my reasoning. So I learned a valuable lesson in the dating arena: the catchall bad date response: there is no chemistry.

Recently, I tried a date with a geeky gal that was like a date sketch right out of a bad episode of Seinfeld.

Our geek credentials were never in question. She was a divorcee whose children were also geeks, her son a graduate of Carnegie Melon in a technical curriculum, Magna Cum Laude. I have definitive geek credentials that I have tried to overcome, with limited success, in some social situations at least. Too modest to mention, I'm a geek's geek.

I suggested that a dance was a good venue for us to meet, because that's about the only situation I can manage. It took years of practice and great effort to pry myself from the wallpaper long enough to meet interesting, intelligent women who are more than occasionally great dancers too. But this woman flatly refused meeting in that venue (I think she lied about dancing), so we tried "dinner and a movie" backwards. You can already see how it's getting awkward. Dinner and a movie saves tons of money on expensive movie popcorn and even less healthful snacks than the reverse.

I was put off at first by the fact that her profile photo did not show a large facial mole (not much easier or cheaper to remove with photoshop than with plastic surgery, folks!). At least, gk2gk has some warnings about that. People will lie like rugs on profiles too, but that's another story. But this date got much worse...

After the movie (a bad one!), we went to an upscale Mexican restaurant across the street. The chair/stools were in two sizes: too tall, and too short. While eating at a table with the "short" stools, and during a conversation which was already going badly, I got a severe double leg cramp from sitting too long (a few minutes) on the short stools, which simultaneously elicited a spasm of choking on the food, which was as bad as it was over priced. The effect was like my whole body was rejecting this gal. The date ended abruptly after I stopped choking, and neither of us have attempted any further contact.

The only worse date I ever had (another 'geek') was a woman whose ex had beaten her until one eyelid would not open completely. That date was over in less time than the approximately 1/10 second I fixated on the damaged eyelid. Like the first woman above, this one had doctored her profile photo. But she did it by presenting a photo of herself seated at a distance 20 feet from the camera!

Next time some gal tries to change the date to someplace I'm not comfortable or haven't tried, I won't be there. And so it goes. More socially adept folk pick up on this sort of thing faster only because they get more dates than us geeks.

He picked me up from my Mom and Dad's house. I was about 17 and he was about 18.

We then went to see the first "Harry Potter" (he was dressed as Harry).

After we went to dinner at McDonald's and played in the ball-pit.

When we came back to my complex we went to play on the jungle gym....it was kind of embarrassing when we had to call the security guard over to help get him down from the slide that he got stuck on (he was a little too large for it).

Needless to say, we didn't have a second date, not because I didn't like him, but because the security guard told him that he was banned from coming back because he did "major damage" to common property.

We didn't have a second date, not because I didn't like him, but because the security gard told him that he was banned from coming back because he did "major damage" to common property, even though there was nothing damaged.

Now that I think back on it, it cracks me up, but back then I was upset about it. Oh well, what's meant to be, will be.

He was fun and cute, but I guess it just wasn't meant to be.

This was ages ago. I was 23 (I'm 33 now) and she was 24 at the time. We went out on 2 dates.

Well, I'd ask her if she liked museums and she did. So, I started out with a walk through the Museum of Natural History in Manhattan, then afterwards coffee and a late lunch/early dinner at Edgar's Cafe (the cafe was built on the former home of Edgar Allan Poe), then a quick drive to the village and leisurely walk around, browsing and window shopping at the various small shops lining the streets and ending the night at one of the cafe's or small clubs in the village (like 'Cafe Wha?') for some drinks and talk while we listened to the house band play.

Nothing really came of it. We chatted online for a few weeks after that and eventually she met someone and stopped coming online much. That was the end of that.

Well I don't know if this falls under "geeky date" but:

I met a woman last year at a great Irish pub where they had a great rock/Irish band playing. She was funny, and loved to dance. Our date the next week started by meeting at a restaurant. As we sat down she made the suggestion of eating there and then shooting some pool at a place down the street. Sounds good! The conversation was the usual, family, politics etc. After dinner she asked if I would mind going down the road to a place that she felt was "very cool". I agreed. The "very cool" place turned out to be a 24 hr prayer chapel! So here I am midnight Sat. night on a first date while my date is praying (for what I can only guess). Now religion had come up in the conversation and she was aware that I am not a religious person. Even had I been, It would still have struck me as strange behavior!

This one happened a few months ago, I went to a movie with this girl inSacramento, and afterwards we went back to her place. Want to know what we did? She sat down in front of her computer and started playing Dark age of camelot, and I just sat down and played gamecube. We did that until 3 am. This was our first date, and is the geekiest one I've ever had.

My geekiest date was with a guy that one of my good friends from school thought we'd get along well so she told me to meet her at a cafe and invited him. Both of us were 16 So we started seeing each other in school more often. Then we just kept meeting up in a few different places to get to know each other.

This one time, I met my boyfriend in the school library and he tutored me in Math. He even tested me to see that I understood what he went over. Then, when we were done and there were a few minutes left we stayed there and talked but it was still on the topic of Math. He's such a geek that he didn't even sit next to me, he sat across from me. In other words, he's not the type of guy that wants to get too close to a girl too soon because he is shy. That's why I love him, he is respectful.

I meet a girl at Weird al con in Chicago, we talked online and decided to go on a date. For our 1st date, we drove down to Gen Con in Indianapolis to see the great Luke Ski (currently this century's most requested artist on the Dr.Demento show) in concert at Gencon's masquerade half time. We helped Luke set up and take down and sell cd’s, then drove to Chicago to see Weird Al in concert. We listened to Dr.Demento hits and shows all the way there on my laptop.

#10

When I was 22, I was a computer science major at DeVry Tech. Of course, I was the only girl in most of the classes, and of course, everybody there would qualify as a geek. I had to work hard to get a guy to ask me out, and finally one of my classmates did. He picked me up and took me to the computer lab!!! He had created his own video game and was testing it out. I sat at one terminal and he sat at another, and we played against each other. It wasn’t a very good game, as I recall. But, we spent 6 hours playing it. Well, actually, we spent 6 hours in the lab, about 4 or 5 of those hours he spent fixing errors in the game. I amused myself playing solitaire while he was making the changes. He got an A in the class, as I recall.