We seem to have a lot of these Top 10 type of lists. But they are easy to write, so I continue them. The dating paradigm is of course my bread and butter. I do not want this to turn into a blog on dating, but slowly that is what it is becoming. We already have the 10 P's of dating; today I share Seven "Do Nots" of dating. We only have seven, as ten became too long. A few of these come from my own experience. Others come from people I have lived with. Some of them are literally just things I invented, but thought sounded cool.
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2. Do not go ice skating. Maybe other people have had success with this, but I have not had good luck with ice skating. The first time I tried taking some girl to skate, she got "tired" in the first 3 minutes and couldn't skate. The second time I tried to go ice skating with some girl, I almost got my fingers cut off by a little kid that tripped me. Then on the way home my windshield defroster broke. The third time I went skating, the rink manager yelled at me for not wearing a helmet. I tried to tell him that shared helmets are how lice are spread, but he did not care. Luckily Mrs. Stwetchipants was not there to give her accusations.3. Do not inform the girl of how you are doing in school. Never answer this question. Did you just get a D+ in Social Dance? Don't mention it. If you just kicked the living trash out of her in Math 450, when she asks how you did, dodge the question. If she wonders how you did in American Heritage and you say you got an A, she will quickly inform you she did not get such a grade, and then end the conversation with something like "freaks like you are what's wrong with America."
4. Do not inform the girl's father how you are doing in school. Especially if you have just met him. Perhaps later on in the relationship is the time to divulge the fact that you got much better grades in school than he did.
I once went to a girl's house to pick her up for an activity. Her father was out in the yard digging a hole. I do not know what he planned on placing in the hole, but it was rectangular and about 6 feet deep. Perhaps let's just assume it was a fallout shelter and not a potential grave. As it was hard to avoid a large guy toting a square blade shovel, I had to speak with this hole-digging-father. I stopped to shoot the bull and had to just hope he did not shoot me. Somehow my school work came up and I think I came across as one of those aforementioned freaks ruining America. His daughter is now married to a guy that digs holes in the wilderness.
5. Do not admit that you stalked your date on the Internet. Yes, everyone does it. But do not tell him or her that you know the names of all their siblings, the name of their shovel wielding father, the name of their pet turtle, and their mile time from high school. Also avoid letting on that you have gone through every album on their Facebook profile, including the one from 2006 when Facebook was still in its nascent stages and they were as well. This can be especially disturbing when you realize that you were in college in 2006, while your date, on the other hand, was in the 6th grade. This leads to the next suggestion.
6. Do not date someone outside your age range. Some people suggest half your age plus seven for the lower bound, and then subtract seven from your age and double for the upper bound. This would place my range at about 20.3365 + 10E(-16) years to nearly 40 years old. This means that I could date someone born during the Gerald Ford administration on Friday, then turn around on Saturday night and take out someone who was still in diapers when Bill Clinton declared "I am not a crook." (Okay, that was Richard Nixon, but.......) Hence I feel like this type of a formula works if you are in high school, but I am not super comfortable with such a wide age interval. (Although, I did know of a presidential candidate who married his high school geometry teacher, so perhaps he worked such wide ranges to his advantage).
Instead I propose a new formula for men*:
ageRange<-function(yourAge){This is some R code if you decide to run it for yourself. Or you can try this calculator I have provided. This runs the above formula. My associate helped implement some of the Javascript for this. I am still working on making the formula for females more reasonable. Maybe at some point I will get a better formula, but for now, the female button has limited accuracy.
lowBound = (sqrt(yourAge + 5)-9/11)^2
upBound = (sqrt(yourAge + 3)+2/23)^2
interval = c(lowBound, upBound)
return(interval)
}
I actually am quite pleased with this formula, as it gives very reasonable age ranges for a much larger variety of people. The formula is consistent clear up for people that are past the century mark (88.90168 to 104.77259 years old is their range). If you are, say, 33 years old, you could date people that are between 28.582 and 37.051 years old. Much better than the 23.5 to 52 years old range suggested by the first formula. My range is 22.98535 years to 30.45215 years. I actually sometimes associate with people in those ranges, so this is a far superior estimate to that whole minus 7 and double thing.
7. Do not kiss while holding a cat. If you have seen the final scene of Breakfast at Tiffany's, you know what I mean. Or, if you have tried it, you know what I mean. Also, do not kiss dogs. Period. Amen. This second suggestion has nothing to do with dating. At least usually.......
*My consultant for the blog informed me that there should be a separate formula for women. Perhaps the formula for women can be mirrored from the men's formula by reversing the center value differences. This allows us to make the consistency claim. I will write some code in R for you if you desire. A very difficult thing to capture is the fact that it is okay for a 35 year old man to date a 23 year old woman, but it all depends who initiates the relationship. For now though, my formula is only to develop a suggestion.
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