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First dates -- the good, the bad, the OMG

  • Story Highlights
  • Not everyone's first date is dragged screaming from a concert
  • Most first dates only involve nervousness and conversation gaps
  • Expert: Always have an escape plan if date doesn't work out
  • Keep first dates short and plan something that allows conversation
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By Diane Mapes
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(LifeWire) -- When Sid Savara, a 28-year-old software developer from Honolulu, struck up a conversation with a cute girl in a Los Angeles ice cream shop three years ago, he was excited to learn that she, too, admired the musician Beck.

Keeping a first date short -- like meeting for a drink -- is safer if you don't know the person very well.

Keeping a first date short -- like meeting for a drink -- is safer if you don't know the person very well.

But she didn't just like him -- as Savara discovered when he took her to a Beck concert on a first date two weeks later -- she loooooved Beck. So much so that when the musician came out on stage, she refused to stop screaming.

"By the third or fourth song, people were nudging her, tapping her on the shoulder asking her to keep it down," he says. "Finally, somebody called security."

Within minutes, Savara's date was in the middle of a scuffle with security guards. Shortly thereafter, both of them were escorted out.

"We had pretty good seats, so the whole way out everybody got to witness this lunatic screaming and raving, 'I want my money back! You don't know who I am!'," he says. "I was like 20 feet behind her with my head down, but everybody knew that was my date."

While many first dates can be mundane affairs -- marked by jangled nerves and awkward non sequiturs -- others stand out as a little slice of heaven. Or a heaping helping of hell. Movies about first dates »

Got any jelly?

Ginny Tzotzolas' most memorable first date -- and her worst -- was a double date she went on six years ago. Her friend's date was a handsome farm-league baseball player who revealed en route to the restaurant that he'd recently been paroled from prison. Tzotzolas' date was the guy's roommate, a man who'd been described as "big and sweet" but turned out to be more like Lenny from "Of Mice and Men."

"He was not very bright," says Tzotzolas, a 33-year-old marketing executive from Vicksburg, Mississippi, who's now happily married. "When the server came around with bread and olive oil, he leaned over and sniffed it, then asked if he could have jelly. And the other guy kept telling stories about the people he met in prison."

Ditching a bad date

Is there any good way to get out of a bad date?

"If you feel your date's creepy or you're both clearly not having a good time, you can fake a toothache or a migraine or an allergy attack or have a prearranged 'emergency' phone call set up," says Jennifer Worick, co-author of "The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Dating and Sex," which outlines a handful of bad-date escapes.

"It may be transparent but it's a way to let the other person save face," she says. "I also think you can just say, 'You know, it's clear we're not a good fit.' They're not going to argue unless they're really wackadoo."

Cutting your losses early not only saves time for both parties, it can keep the date from turning into a three-ring circus. That may not be such a bad thing, however, as Krisita Burket, 24, discovered nearly four years ago.

The world's longest date

"The typical first date is dinner and a movie, but if you go into a movie, you have to be quiet the whole time," says Burket, an account executive from Tallahassee, Florida, whose best first date was with a park planner named Brian. He took her to see the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus.

"This was lively and exciting, and we got to talk," says Burket, who met Brian while playing softball for a city league. "We had so much fun we went for dessert and coffee afterwards. And then we still weren't ready for the night to end so we came back to my apartment and watched a movie. The date finally ended at about two in the morning. I had such a good time, I wanted to call all my friends at two in the morning and tell them."

The date was an unqualified success. A little over two years later, Burket and Brian, now 32, were wed.

Short and sweet

Activities that allow you to have a conversation work best for first dates, says Worick, who recommends bowling, shooting pool, playing darts or even taking a leisurely walk around a neighborhood.

"If you're somewhat sporty, you could even go bike riding," she says. "Although you always want to stay in populated areas" for safety's sake, she adds.

As for first-date nerves, Worick recommends keeping the date short and sweet -- an hour-long coffee date, for instance -- and scheduling something immediately afterwards.

"It may seem harried to them, but you leave them wanting more and leave yourself wanting more and it takes the pressure off knowing it's such a short period of time," she says.

The 'click'

If the chemistry is right, of course, it doesn't matter what you do on a first date.

Bret Bouchard, a 29-year-old Web designer from Cohoes, New York, says his best first date was an evening he spent a year ago with a bank manager named Ashley Stevenson, now 24. The two had a great meal at a Mexican restaurant then spent the rest of the night walking around the Empire State Plaza in Albany.

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"It's always been my favorite part of Albany, and I thought it would be a romantic place to go afterwards," says Bouchard. "I showed her all my favorite areas -- the sculptures, the reflecting pool, the alcove in the performance center where your voice echoes. We ended up sitting there and talking for hours. It was the place we had our first kiss. And it was also the place I brought her back to one year later when I asked her marry me."

The wedding is tentatively set for fall of 2010.

LifeWire provides original and syndicated content to Web publishers. Diane Mapes is the author of "How to Date in a Post-Dating World." Her column, "Single Shot," appears in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

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