Be Normal

Be Normal*

Look I get it.  I really, really do.  Dating, for the most part, can be pretty terrible.  It’s hard enough meeting someone in the cold hard city, let alone having that someone be a someone that you want to date. But let's just say you did find this person, and you want to date them and maybe you sort of get the feeling that they kind of like you and want to date you.  So,  what do you do?   How do you not screw it up?   How do you make sure that you don’t assume they’re screwing it up as you both try to figure out what to do when and how to say it?

There is a way, I think, to navigate through these murky waters of dating whether it's online or set ups or a well meaning (yet meddlesome) Aunt:  let’s all just act normal.  And by this I mean real life human being normal, not the kind of normal we think is now normal because we’ve been dating in this cesspool for so long. Real life human being normal where we treat a person who we think we might like and think might like us as a normal human being, and we in turn act like a normal human being.  REVOLUTIONARY!

Is it normal, after meeting someone and having a grand ol’ time, to take their number and never use it?  No, no, it’s not.  Is it normal to never hear from someone again after you've gone on two or three kinda good dates? No, my friends, it isn’t.   What about waiting more than a day to reply to someone's message?  Nope, that’s not normal either.   How about dating someone for a while yet never meeting their friends?  That’s right, not normal!   Of course there may be reasonable explanations to all this behaviour, but death, amnesia or being whisked into a witness protection program, while unfortunate and certainly possible, aren’t really normal occurrences either.  

The basic credo of treating one another as human beings serves us well in all facets of life, so why can’t we extend this philosophy to the one activity where we should really be putting our best selves forward?  Not the super cool player (not normal) self or the I’m so hot and desirable I don’t need to call anyone back (not normal) self, but the normal human being self that you are on the regular.  Come on.  I know you’re in there.  Be normal.  Can you be normal?

*Originally published March 27, 2015 in Ego Magazine Online.