I saw a list on the local news the other day that showed things and activities that intelligent people prefer based on a recent study. One of these things was curly fries. So now the world knows. Smart people like curly fries.

Maybe I’m stupid, or maybe I have a really skewed idea of intelligence, but I’ve seen some pretty stupid people eat curly fries in my life. My friend in elementary school liked to stick curly fries in his ear. I don’t remember who it was specifically, or where he is now, but my guess would be prison. I think the researchers just approached college professors and asked them if they enjoyed curly fries, and they were like, “Sure I guess.”

So, if you’re on a date with someone, and they eat curly fries, that’s a keeper right there. Hold on to them. They are one of the smartest people you have or will ever meet. Try to let them talk, and if you must speak, be sure that the topic is either politics, science, or fried potato products. Don’t be intimidated. Watch C-SPAN or something. Also, if you feel you can’t sustain an intelligent conversation, try to set the date at a place that does not serve curly fries, because not only do smart people like curly fries, but eating curly fries makes smart people even smarter. Every time you fry a potato, the batter and oil in which it’s fried unleashes atoms that are structured differently than others, and rushes encyclopedic knowledge straight to your brain once eaten.

And while smart people like curly fries, dumb people write inane blog posts about smart people liking curly fries. I typically prefer non-curly fries. I’m not sure what that means, but I think it just means that I like regular french fries better. I think it’s probably better to measure intelligence based on intelligence rather than on fried snack foods.

There are many terrible, life-altering decisions that you can make while drunk. You can get pregnant (usually this one is only possible if you are a woman). You can contract a disease. You can drive and get in a car accident. You can drunk-text your ex-girlfriend, thus setting into motion a two-month-long series of increasingly awkward ‘apology texts,’ where each one just makes things so much worse until she files another restraining order, and you forget about this until a month later while eating at a restaurant a mile from her house with your family, and then you get arrested by the undercover police officer posing as your brother.

However, the worst possible thing you can do while drunk is eat. You really don’t realize what and how much you eat while you’re drunk. Last Saturday morning I woke up feeling horrible. I checked my transaction history and noticed that I spent $50 at Wendy’s. I had no idea that they even allowed you to spend more than $10 at a time. Another good indicator of my ill-advised actions was the trail of French fries leading to my toilet.

I would have rather contracted gonorrhea than have had to deal with another fast food hangover. The best part of my weekend is usually the fact that I’m off my diet and can eat whatever I want. With a fast food hangover, I’m usually not hungry for the rest of the weekend. So then, if I still want to enjoy food, I have to force down bacon avocado hamburgers into my body which is already trying its best to purge everything inside of it.

I have an upcoming date this Sunday. I have to make sure I don’t drunk-eat too much this Friday and Saturday night. I not only want to be able to enjoy the date, but I also don’t want  to smell of hamburgers so much that I have to overcompensate by using an entire can of cologne and then end up smelling like Dave Thomas must have smelt while preparing for a social occasion.

I have never felt more out of place than in the company of religious Jews. I went to a southern Baptist funeral once, and compared to the former, it felt like a close familial occasion. It was really pleasant, aside from the decaying corpse in the open casket at the front of the stage with that strong, detectable stench emanating throughout the tiny room.  I was trepidatious about going in as we parked because being a sheltered white kid from a sheltered home in a sheltered suburb protected by a sheltered sheltie, I had previously not been confined to a room containing more than one black person. Now, I was about to walk into one containing not 2, but 84.

Though I felt out of place the entire time, it was okay because it was a new experience and I was supposed to feel out of place since I was (am) not a southern Baptist. However, I am hookup, and this is why I feel so bad when in the company of religious Jews. They are very nice. That is the extent of our similarities. The house is always cramped and hot, and the religious mores always outweigh the pleasures of the company of others. Also, this should not be understated: the food never comes. I always go in after being promised food. Though the food does eventually come, it is usually about three days and 87 small-talk topics later. When the food comes, it’s extremely weird. I swear to God one of the dishes tonight was a mixture of bell peppers, raisins, melted cheese, and pineapples. You have to eat it because you’re so hungry that by this point you would eat much, much worse. On second thought, there is nothing worse than the combination of the four foods I just described.

Also, at these events, people try to set me up a lot, which is usually fine. Though I can never argue with the idea of a woman liking me, I want to say something like, “Yeah, but I also want to be able to do things in life like eat things that aren’t bell peppers, raisins, melted cheese, and pineapples. I also want to be able to not have to produce 16 children within a period of six months.” In a couple of years, though, I will be out of time, and will have to settle with one of these women and start making good use of my fertilization skills.

I have never been in less of a mood to write a post than write now. On top of compulsively eating 2,000 calories in one meal… there is nothing on top of that… that is it. I feel like crap.

I spent half a year on a rigorous diet losing a lot of weight. Tonight, while on a date that deteriorated from wanting the girl to not hate me to wanting the girl to not kill me, I simultaneously ate without realizing what I was doing. Before I could even walk out of the Starbucks, I had managed to make the girl I have been dating for a month literally and physically hate me, I somehow had inhaled enough food to feed myself until Valentine’s Day when I will inevitably eat myself to death, and I somehow also ruined an elementary school recital. I will now explain those first two things only.

I thought, for some reason, that it would be funny to jokingly insult this poor girl incessantly. I have no idea why I did it, but I feel terrible now. I really like this person a lot and cannot honestly find one fault in her. However, this didn’t override the fact that stupid petty jokes (that didn’t make sense) kept coming out of my mouth. It all coalesced in the car, after she had left me for the night, and the food and drinks I had ingested had finally reached my colon. At that point I got home and started writing this. That was about ten minutes ago and now I’m writing this part. Now I’m going to bed.

I always experience one constant feeling after a date, no matter how well or badly it went. That is, an intense feeling of hunger. Since I work late the earliest I am able to meet for a date is 7:30, but on some occasions it can be as late 8:30 or 9:00. Since I typically go out on dates during the week this is often times too late for the woman I am going out with to eat dinner, therefore we usually just grab drinks and, if I’m lucky, split a small bite.

I work on the far south side of Chicago, and every place I could conceivably meet a woman in order to go on a date is located north of me; therefore it is easy for me to always drive straight from work to a date.  Usually for a first date I like to suggest a place where we can comfortably sit, have a drink and order food if we want, but often times my dates will have eaten right before we meet and therefore won’t be very hungry.

Since I no doubt raced to the date straight from work – changing on my way out the door and, once in a while, doing my hair in the car to avoid being late — I always show up to dates starving. Furthermore, if the woman I am on a date with isn’t interested in eating then I never order anything because I’m just not comfortable sitting there stuffing my face when she’s not having anything to eat.

Of course, knowing that this is going to be the feeling that I enter every date with, I could make the necessary adjustment and either eat something on my way, or make sure that we specifically make plans to eat dinner during the date. Usually, however, I like to keep it open-ended and just go with the flow of the evening based on how we are both feeling. Unfortunately, a side effect of planning things this way is that if we don’t eat I have to go through the entire date hungry. Additionally, I realized recently that as a result of my empty stomach the effects of the drinks we have are magnified and therefore I need to closely watch my consumption so that I am able to drive home.

I know that this particular problem might seem silly, and most people reading this could list off the top of their head a half-dozen reasonable solutions; however this is the way that I am most comfortable approaching first dates. So, even though it doesn’t seem rational, I’m going to probably keep things this way, which means I’ll just have to suck it up if on my next date if we don’t order any food knowing that after it’s over I’m going to have to race home and make a frozen dinner.

I am a food sharer. A sampler if you will who prefers, and usually insists, that at least one other person that I am enjoying a meal with splits it with me. Growing up my mom was the one who cleverly instilled in me the idea that if you are at a restaurant, where a bunch of things on the menu look good, you don’t have to be burdened with the difficult decision of choosing one singular item to order.

Instead, my mom opened my eyes to the idea that we could each pick one thing that we wanted and share so that we would, in actuality, get to try two different things. Thus far, this has turned out to be one of the most important and lasting lessons that my mom has taught me, since I attempt to follow this bit of wisdom every time I go out to eat.

While I’m not willing to definitively say whether or not someone who enjoys sharing or splitting food at restaurants is a “deal breaker” as to whether I will ultimately date them or not; it certainly helps. A couple of months ago I went out on a first date to a Mexican restaurant that I really liked, where there were two things on the menu that I had trouble deciding between. I figured that since she knew that I had been there before that she might ask for a suggestion or give an indication that she might be open to sharing.

She ended up not giving any clues as to her ordering preferences, but I did get lucky that she ended up requesting one of the dishes that I would have wanted to share. Upon hearing her order I quickly asked for the other dish, but once our food came I failed to inquire about sharing. Instead I opted to let it go since you never know what people’s preferences are going to be and simply ate only my food.

In spite of my disappointment in not sharing we still both had a fun time and decided to go out again. After having a first date where we didn’t share anything, we were once again at a restaurant in a food ordering situation for our third date.  After blankly staring at the menu wondering whether or not I should bring up the fact that I like to share food I was fortunate that she interrupted my thinking with a novel suggestion, “Do you just want to get two things and share?”

After letting out an obvious sigh of relief I told her of my affection for sharing food. She answered back that we should have shared on our first date since what we both ordered looked so good. After acknowledging her response we went on to have a conversation about how we both enjoyed sharing food for the exact the same reasons.  This once again proves that unless you let people know your tastes and preferences, whether they be for sharing food, eating a particular type of food or even something non-food related, you won’t have as many opportunities to share cool things in common.