Did you place your bets? So far I've been about 50/50. I am amazed at how many people thought this was a lame cheap date. Maybe I really am missing something. Just because the outing would have been cheap doesn't mean the quality would have been. The pizza really is quite good. Like say I have free tickets to a tropical paradise weekend getaway. It would not make any sense not to use those tickets simply because they were free. Although the differences between the two scenarios is not lost on me. My thoughts on the matter were that it would have been a pressure free fun time to meet someone new.
I received her response early this morning at work. I could have flown considering the butterflies I had upon opening it. Here is the response in full: I'm actually already going to dinner with someone Thursday night. Sorry I can't make it; thanks for the invite.
Sigh.
Still I was able to make reservations for a friend of mine and his fiance so that was nice.
For fun (and for adding a bit of length to this post), let us go back to our immature insecure years and grossly over-analyze these two sentences. The biggest problem with the response is how to interpret it. It's not like she said "Oh I would have loved to but..." The best I get here is that second sentence. This makes it difficult to determine if she means go ahead and invite her to other things, this time just doesn't work, or if she's trying to politely say 'stay away'. Essentially 'half full or empty.' For further evidence I looked to the other parts of the response. In this case there were none. In other words no greeting or signature. That to me indicates a certain level of coldness, but at the same time she wrote it at 1:30 this morning which may mean she was just in a rush to get to bed but wanted to pay me the courtesy of sending a response. But on the other hand maybe she was up till 1:30 because she was trying to find someone else to go to dinner with on Thursday so that her response wouldn't be a downright lie (I'm guilty of this). The semi-colon is curious. It means she's either a fantastic writer or she re-read her response a few times. For me, semi-colons always come after the fact. Like I'm never just writing along and say "oh, I think it's time for a semi-colon." The comma always comes first, and then upon reflection the semi-colon replaces it. Now she did get into Northwestern which I'm told is a fantastic school (remember I'm from another State where we don't hear about these fancy schools), so she may really be just that smart to use semi-colons the way many of us use commas. But on the other hand if she isn't that smart then that means she did reflect on her choice of words. Which brings to question what was she thinking about. Especially to get out two sentences. Maybe there was a great inner conflict here of possibly canceling her other plans. Maybe she was purposely trying to be vague, to her success as I'm clueless on how to interpret this. Maybe she was trying to politely let me down and was trying to think of chartible phrasing. Or maybe, and likely, she just really couldn't make it, appreciated the invitation all the same and didn't consider about any future plans as it was 1:30 in the morning, so trying to answer this question of 'she loves me, loves me not' by getting into her subconcious is almost impossible. Oh the sweet joy of over-analyzing.
In any event I will see her at Church tonight and just ask her. Which means I can spend the rest of the evening letting my nerves get the best of me. Good grief.
4 comments:
I'm hoping this will be the beginning of some communication exchanges between you both. Perhaps she'll go into details when you see her. Maybe it will open an opportunity to set up another date. She will at the very least be flattered so thats positive.
Hahaha, positive for her maybe. I think everytime I 'flatter' a girl it takes about a year off my life. But thanks for the comment and encouraging words.
Oh man, so much to say...
1. I like this date idea. Free does not equal a bad first date, as long as you're up front about it. Like, hey, I have this fun opportunity to try this new place before it opens, and we can go out for fancy dessert if the dinner blows.
2. The facebook message is ambiguous. I think you start to analyze it well - she very easily could have said that she was busy but asked for a raincheck. I would say that it wasn't very inviting EXCEPT that you asked her out to a very specific event (a free pizza one-night deal) rather than just in general out to dinner some time. That in some ways limited her response in terms of a future event.
3. You should definitely ask her out again the next time you see her. Be a little more vague and see what she says - ie. do you want to go out to dinner (maybe just coffee or ice cream to start?) this weekend. Say you'd like to catch up about the retreat since you missed it. This way, you give her more room to response and you can get a better read.
4. Semi-colons are an amazing tool of punctuation. I use them all the time; they are never an afterthought.
You really need to write that book Whitney. I love you're advice but you're too late!! You need to constantly check up on me.
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