Totally Awkward Tuesday

So, in honor of having just moved back to the wonderful city of College Station, I'm going to tell you a totally awkward story about my first Midnight Yell. (As always, this is brought to you by Tova Darling -- her story today is one that we can all relate to, I promise.)

For those of you not lucky enough to be Aggies, Midnight Yell is a tradition at A&M: We gather in Kyle Field at midnight the Friday night before every football game (unless it's away) and do yells (not cheers!) to get pumped up for the next day's game. And after it's over, all the lights in the stadium turn off for a moment and you're supposed to mug down (make out/kiss) your date. And if you don't have a date, you're supposed to hold up a lighter, find someone else with a lighter and kiss them.

For the first Midnight Yell, a girl I was friends with set me and her suite-mate (who is now incidentally my new room mate -- check out our new apartment!) up on blind dates with some Corps of Cadets boys she knew. The guy I went with was a sweet guy named Dan -- really fun, strong faith, easy to talk to -- who I met once at the library the day before our date. We went out with his entire outfit and Ayla (which made it a little less awkward), had dinner, hung out for a while, then went on to yell practice. As you probably know by now (or don't if you're not a regular reader... hmmm...) I'm a naturally awkward person, so I didn't exactly make it easy on the poor guy but the whole night was just awkward. Let's face it, it was a blind date -- there was no way in heck it was going to go well. But this went awfully -- we forgot each other's name more than once, he was off talking to one of his friends and forgot about me for like forty-five minutes, Ayla's date's room mate was flirting with me more than Dan was, all his other corps buddies were making stupid jokes and talking about the corps and things we didn't understand, Ayla's date was also being kind of rude and stand-offish, so she and I spent more time alone in the stands talking to each other than with our dates.

And then, as if this would cure all the awkwardness at the end of the night, when the lights went out, Dan and I kissed. As if that would make the fifteen-minute walk back to his car, over to his brother's apartment to watch movies, and then our final good night at about 3 am totally normal.

But, luckily, I got a lot out of that night. I don't know if Ayla and I would have been friends if it weren't for that bonding night and Dan and I are actually pretty good friends now and I can't wait for him to move back to CS (he lives in DC -- lucky him!). So, over all, it was a good night, but easily the most awkward way to start two very good friendships.