Last night, I found doing myself something I never thought I’d do - speed date.

While on vacation in North Carolina, on the way back from the beach, I received a text message from a female co-worker friend basically telling me to clear my calendar for July 16th because we were going speed dating. I laughed and texted her back saying something along the lines of “yeah right, whatever.” I then shared the humorous idea with my car-mates, who chuckled along with me. But then Dan said why not, so I thought really, why not? What did I have to lose? So I signed up for it.

The speed dating session (a.k.a pre-dating) was through cupid.com and was held at The Melting Pot, a fondue restaurant I haven’t been to since high school prom (that’s quite a story I’ll have to share sometime). I really wasn’t sure what to expect. The only exposure I’ve had to speed dating is what I saw in the movie Hitch. Apparently that’s the only thing most other people know about it too… (I wore out that reference by the end of the night - I desperately needed new material.)

We arrived at the restaurant, got our numbered name tags and headed to the private dining room that would be our dating zone for the night. Each table was numbered, so the guy and the girl with the same numbers were matched up first. For 6 minutes, we basically interviewed each other, then the hostess rang her bell (what, no gong?) and the guys rotated to the next waiting girl. This continued until each guy had a chance to talk to each girl.

I went into this with low expectations, wondering what kind of girl would go speeding and would they really be my “type.” I constantly fought to keep myself from thinking that, though, reminding myself that after all, *I* was doing it.

There were 14 people in attendance, 8 guys and 6 girls. It was supposed to be a ratio of one-to-one (one girl was a no-show), but if it turned out to be unbalanced, I thought for sure the ratio would be the other way around, thinking this would be something girls would be more apt to do than guys. I was already down one opportunity due to my co-worker taking up a girl spot, but now two more spots were empty, so I only had the chance to interact with 5 girls. Then I found out two of the girls were “fill-ins,” friends of the hostess that were asked to come to balance out the ratio. They were still single gals, but probably didn’t have the same goals or expectations of the event as the rest of us.

Beforehand, I thought of some questions that I wanted to ask, more thought-provoking, meaningful and insightful questions, not the clichéd “What do you do for a living?” or “What do you like to do in your free time?” However, once I got into it, it was hard to keep myself from going down that worn-out and boring road. It was difficult not to open the conversation by asking those comfortable, direct questions, and six minutes is not very long and went by fairly quickly (more quickly in some cases, less quickly in other.)

After the speed dating was done, the next step was to log on to the website and mark each as “Let’s talk” or “No thanks.” Only if both mark “Let’s talk” will contact information be exchanged. If one person marks “Let’s talk” but the other doesn’t, the “No thanks” person will be notified, giving the opportunity for a second chance.

There were a couple of girls that seemed interesting, but no strong connections were made. We’ll see how these turn out… While it seemed more fruitful and interesting to meet in person rather than online (much easier to lie and put up fake photos), there is still so much missing from such a short interaction. First impressions are critical in an event such as this.

I don’t think I’ll do this again, but it was an interesting experience. It did feel great to put myself out there, take the risk and get out of my comfort zone, though.