Date Jitters by Martin Bodek (Published October 3, 1996 in The Jewish Press) The Call: Here is where it all begins, you have to call. Mind you, we never call at the right time. After putting you on hold, you start talking. Now you need to come up with a phone manner. You try to sound smooth yet aidel, bold yet sweet. It never works, in the end you act like yourself (which is how you should act anyway). You both finally decide on a date for the date and you start psyching yourself up. The Shave: This comes first. It takes about a half hour. Minimum. You shave for fifteen minutes, making sure your chin is as bald as Gandhi's head. Of course, you never get every spot, so you call your Rebbi to see if he found a heter for razors yet. He always says "no" so you continue shaving. A half hour later you're done, so you take a comfy shower, brush your teeth, and freshen your breath.

(Its me moshe, according to Baba Sali, well let me quote him, The Rav shouted "How can you say that he is a person who fears Hashem, if he has no beard? How can a person who truly fears Hashem shave his beard?" End moshes sticking his nose in)

The Breath Test: You ask your sister how your breath smells, so you expel everything you've got in your lungs into her face. She always says (after grimacing) "no good." So you try a different mouthwash and repeat the lung exhalation procedure. she says "no good." After 8 mouthwashes you smell like a toothpaste bomb and suddenly you don't care about your sister's opinion. You think that your breath will fade anyway by the time your pick up the girl, so you don't much care. The Cologne: You have no idea how this is applied, but some idiot friend convinced you that you gotta wear it. So you go raid your father's cabinet looking for something that'll do. You find something that'll be just about right. You screw off the lid and pour it all over yourself. Suddenly you realize (due to the overpowering stench) that this is not how you put on cologne, so you wash and scrub the stuff off and reapply a new one. It gets in your eyes, so you wash it out and reapply. In the end, you smell like a Chernobyl perfume factory. You think that the smell will fade anyway by the time you pick up the girl, so you don't much care. Leaving: You make it to the front door and suddenly your mother is picking lint off your suit, your sister is straightening your tie, and your father is laughing his brains out, tossing anecdotes of his dating experiences at you while you're being primped on the bochur-on-a-date assembly line. Your mother tells you that you missed a spot shaving, so you run back in and retrieve the shaver. The family finally lets you go. The Drive: After plopping the shaver in the glove compartment, you drive carefully, distractedly, worriedly. To get your mind at ease, you play your favorite song LOUD (mine is "Sharp dressed man") to psyche you up. No matter what, you always get there 15 minutes early, so you park about 2 blocks away and flip through the radio dials. Finally, it's 2 minutes to your scheduled arrival. You spruce up your face with the shaver, pull out of your spot, and rumble up to the girl's house. The Arrival: As soon as you get to the front of the house, you have to act quickly. This is because the girl's mother is watching you between the shutters. You suddenly realize that your breath is still kooky and your cologne is still funky. NOW you care, but there's nothing you can do about it, because mom is watching you, and you have to MOVE. So you hop out of the car, gingerly step up to the doorstep and put your finger on the buzzer. The door suddenly swings open as if you said, "Open sesame" instead of actually ringing the bell. This happens because of the mother-father-door-opening system. The mother, who's watching your every move from between the slats, signals to her husband that you're here, the father then places his hand on the knob and twists the millisecond your finger touches his bell. His reaction time is quicker than Michael Johnson's out of the box. Boys know this, it is the only pre-date procedure that the girl's family does that we are aware of. The Interview: That's what it is, an interview, the family sits you down and grills you (albeit gently). But it doesn't last long, because sooner or later the mother disappears, and the girl appears. The moment the girl emerges, all confidence is shot straight to dust. "Do I look good?" "Am I worthy?" "Will she like me?" The girl always looks like a million bucks, while you've just hastily run from the car to the house with no preparation time in between. You feel honored to spend an evening with a lady. Opening the Door: This is the strangest dating procedure known to man. You don't know whether to open the door and let her close it herself (because of tznius) or if you should be a chivalrous mensch and close the door for her. Either way, you always think that what you've done is not what she wanted. So while you're crossing the back of the car, this is what you ponder. Crossing the Back of the Car: This is where time stops for bochurim. This is where you form opinions about the girl, determine whether you've acted like a mensch, and worry about the girl's opinion of you. It is the longest part of the date, because it lasts for an eternity. You finally slo-mo into your seat, and you're on your way.

Date Jitters, Part II by Martin Bodek (Published January 15, 1998 in The Jewish Press) The Car Wash: No girl in the history of dating has ever mentioned to her date that his car is impressively shiny and well manicured. Yet, we go stone bonkers crazy making sure our vehicles are spotless, and I DO mean spotless, for our date. Why? Because we're crazy. Car Door Practice: When we get home from the carwash we usually fish out our keys and start practicing our rapid-door- opening techniques so we don't embarrass ourselves when opening the door for our dates. For those of us with modern cars, there is the key entry and the bop-wop entry (ya know, those beeping thingamajigs all boys love?). For those of us with yeshivish cars, there is the crawl-in-from-the-trunk-to-get-to-the- half-broken-button-so-the-door-can-open-nice-and- creakily entry and the oops-I-set-the-alarm-off-oy-which-one-is-the-right-key- oy-vey-I-broke-off-the-door-handle entry. After that's done, we do the Passenger Seat Arrangement and go back into our houses for our fifth-to-last shave. Passenger Seat Arrangement: You don't want your date to wind up too far behind you in the car so that you get whiplash from simple conversation. You also don't want to put her too far forward so that you're looking at her back. So you multiply her height by the seat width, divide by leg room, add her height, and subtract car size to figure out just where you should position her seat. It's quite simple actually. The Parking Conspiracy: It is a known fact that every single dating girl (and every dating single girl) on the planet has a pump right in front of her house. That eliminates the coziest possible parking spot. The rest of her block consists of driveways and garbage that's spilled over into the gutter. This is the Parking Conspiracy. The fact that we find spots when there are no spots available is generally known as the Parking Miracle. Conversation: What DO you talk about? Nothing. You talk about the beauty of trapezoids and the marvelous talents of giraffes. Around the third or fourth date, you usually think to yourself, "Gee, this trapezoid and giraffe stuff is fascinating, I like her." This is the way we think. Girls get married because everything is so right; guys get married because nothing is so wrong. Lounges: The earth is flat, Bill Gates is broke, mice have good vocabularies, girls love lounges. Got my point? We hate lounges too, so why do we take our ladies there when we should all be taking them to dinner? That would be nice, but that brings us to the dread of the knife. The Knife: Ladies, ever notice that look of terror on your date's face when the waiter sets down the meal in front of him? This is because now he has to use the knife and he has no idea how. What IS this contraption? Which sadistic terrorist invented it? How does it work? We do not know. I prefer to use my fork and knife like chopsticks. I think that's how it works, no? The Stalking Point: There is a point at which, when dropping off your date, you can no longer accompany her. This is the Stalking Point. Do not cross it. The Stalking Point for girls who live in houses with no steps to the entrance is five to ten feet from the entrance. If the girl requires steps to enter her house, you may not advance onto the steps. Stay away from the steps. I've warned you. Sefer Torah Protocol (STP): When your lady enters her house, you must stand patiently at the Stalking Point until she enters and closes the door behind her. In essence, she becomes like a Sefer Torah. You cannot turn your back until the "Aron" is closed and the "Sefer" disappears. Careful when you back up though, you could fall over the pump. Driving Home: You loosen your tie, you blast the music, you drive at 150 miles per hour to get all that stay-at-the-speed- limit-to-impress-your-date out of your system, and detour through various parts of the tri-state area. You finally make it home after meeting all your just-back-from-a-date friends at Ma'ariv in Shomer Shabbos and tell your mommy (who seems to have been sitting at the kitchen table since you left) everything. She helps you decide whether trapezoids and giraffes make for a good or bad shidduch, and in the morning you call the Shadchin (or your friend, or your aunt, or whoever was kind enough to work with G-d for your benefit) with your answer.