I Get Asked Out On Valentines Day

I celebrated Valentines Day proper: with magnificent odds. A group of us (six girls and three guys equals 2:1 - score) went to a bar called the Old Bell for our waiter friend, Taina. If you read like an American, she's the second after me. In fact, here's the rundown, left to right: Martina from Minnesota, June from South Korea, Esther from Switzerland, then there's me, then Virginia from Memphis, Taina from Finland, Hilary from Missouri, and Danny from Washington. Martina and June are with Iowa State, Hilary and Virginia with Arkansas, Danny a perpetual foreign exchange student, and Esther and Taina are here working. I'm an international bachelor, as luck would have it.

(P.S. We all came together through Rome Baptist Church. RBC has provided an instant friend set and a home, even if the pastor's jokes are cheesy, and they have to be to come across to an multilingual audience. So - go you, RBC!)

The Old Bell is one of those prestige establishments that require a membership in order to use the pool tables by the bar, so the whole group had to fill out our names and addresses, and we all got printed cards back in the middle of dinner. Mine said: Captain Cass Trumbo. When asked about it, I said that I though that the nautical aspect of the restaurant made me feel as though I needed to include my rank, as well.

But this wasn't the date. No, that came earlier in the day. After school, I was walking home from school when I popped into a chic boutique to peruse the new men's fashions, because, if you haven't been keeping up with my personal life, I have recently become fashionable (and not in the way that, women want to carry me in their purse. Well, actually, in that way too, but that's not the point). So, in a nameless clothing store, I was looking through the assorted blazers (by TOGS clothing, no less) when the owner/operator/only worker in the store Rion decided he wanted to help me. He kept handing me things to try on, and watching me flip through the stretchy pants. As I was leaving, he stopped me and struck up a conversation about my studies, complimenting me on my Italian. Then he said we should get coffee sometime. Eager to leave, I agreed, and then he said, "Okay, let's go."

I got asked out by a guy on Valentine's Day. After I had stopped running, I reflected and thought about how nice it is to be appreciated by someone, even if it's a guy. It's the thought that counts anyways, like Ned from Pushing Daisies says, "on a holiday created to sell greeting cards, it's still kind of nice to get a card."