Speed dating...on a military base

Never thought you would ever hear/see those words coming from me did ya?  No, me either!  Well my friend Laura mentioned that she had been invited by a friend to go and then asked if I would do it too.  Normally my answer would be "heck no" but for some reason I agreed to go and even had to almost convince her it was a good idea.  I know its crazy but I have no idea why I wanted to go to this thing.  Again this is TOTALLY not in my character at all so who knows.  I went into the situation like this - I don't anticipate anything relationship-wise coming from this experience but it will definitely be an adventure and something to get me out of my comfort zone (but on purpose).

Anyway as we get up to the gate and we have to get the car inspected since none of us are military connected.  The first thing the guard asks is "what brings you ladies to base?"  What is the response the driver gives?  "We're going to speed dating."  OH FANTASTIC!!!!  Now I am super embarrassed to be here and would love for you to leave me at the gate; you can pick me up on your way home.  So we all laugh hysterically, get back in the car, and are on our way.

We get to the sports bar where the event is being held and now I am completely reconsidering the whole thing but once again I push on through.  We get out to the back patio area and are asked to sign in and then sign a waiver claiming we know that the group putting this thing together is not a dating service and are not liable for anything that does or does not happen.  Also, that I am not married.  Oh awesome.

Now we start off with a kind of mingling game thing.  There is a name tag on your back and you have to ask yes or no questions to find out who your person is.  Then you have to find out who your "other half" is; examples include Demi Moore - Ashton Kutcher or eggs - bacon or yin - yang etc.  My person was Robin and my other half was Batman who actually happened to be a very tall, handsome man from Norway who is on base taking a nine-ish month course here in the US.  Oh...and his name is Hans!

Anyway...let the speed dating begin.  The girls are all asked to sit down at a table (two girls to a table) and then the guys fill in across the table - pretty much like you see on tv.  Each mini date supposedly lasted 3 minutes although many of them seemed to drag on and on and on!  Basic questions got asked "what do you do" "tell me about yourself" etc.  By like the 15th person I was so tried of hearing my own schpeel that I said "I could tell you all about how I am a 6th grade teacher but I would rather make up an interesting lie and tell you that I am an astronaut."  The guy seemed to go with me on it so we talked about how it would be cool to be an astronaut.  This has nothing to do with whether or not he was interesting just I was sick of hearing myself say the same thing over and over again.

One tactic that helped out with uninteresting guys was that since we were outside and had to deal with lots of bugs - mosquitoes specifically - if I had nothing to say I would just wave my hand all around my face and say something like "oh goodness these bugs are crazy."

I will say that there were some really good looking and nice men there but alas many of them were younger than me and as suspected, no love connection was made.  I could tell you individual interesting stories but I don't feel like it at the moment and really I think you kinda had to be there for some of them to really be funny.

Verdict on this adventure: a fun experience that I would probably do again - with the same expectations/or lack of expectations as this time.