Date 9 - Games and James

James is a friend that I met through volleyball. I have played against and with him dozens of times. On the volleyball court he is confident, easygoing and perhaps a little too nice. Fun fact: These are all fantastic qualities in a date. Still, I hadn’t considered him as a Lent possibility until my lovely lacrosse date (who I have decided to call Lana) came across his name in her phone while we were at the game.

“Ooh! What about James?”

“Is he single? I thought he was seeing someone.”

“Let’s ask!” Because Lana is tenacious and wholly commonsensical.

Though Lana had probably never texted James about anything before, she fired one off to ask if he was still seeing someone.

His wry reply came moments later, “Hi, Lana. How’s it going?”

Don't hate the player; hate the gammon

And it went on from there. When Lana handed me the reins, I chose a day and James suggested we catch a comedy show at a pub. The timing did not work with my volleyball schedule. I felt guilty and hesitated to tell him so, which was stupid. When I finally told him that it was a great date idea, but that I may have to sneak out early to make it to my games, he was super understanding and kindly offered to do something else.

I suggested going to a board game cafe. Yup, stole the idea from the intern and then took all the credit. Typical. James said he was game for that. Because he knows that puns make life better.

Traffic was insane, parking was ludicrous, and I was late. James had arrived shortly before me (he is not immune to traffic and parking woes, but he seemed less likely to throat-punch somebody and thus is a nicer person). He had actually been to this particular cafe before and knew what was happening. He seemed surprised when the girl at the register asked if it was my first time and I said yes. From that point on, James took the lead.

"I think it's wrong that only one
company makes the game
Monopoly" (Steven Wright)

We wandered along a wall of board games, trying to get a feel for the place and the aptitudes of each other. I am mostly a trivia/card/word game person. I love Cribbage, Bananagrams, Things, Kazinger, Time’s Up, Trivial Pursuit, and Scattergories. I am terrible at strategy games. I lack the patience and the cutthroat single-mindedness that it takes to maintain interest in a game of Monopoly, Risk, or that damnable Ticket to Ride. Not the point. The point is that we ended up choosing two games that I normally would never have played.

Settlers of Japanese SimCity was the first one. Ok, so that’s not what they called it. It involved cards with things and buying stuff and using that stuff to build stuff. It was bizarre. We played awhile before the general sense that we weren’t doing it quite right became a certainty. We laughed and navigated everything with ease and solid good humour. We started over and played again. It was not nearly as tedious as strategy games usually are. I think it helped that there were only the two of us, so the time between dice rolls wasn’t interminable. It also helped that James was superlatively easy to talk to.
 

We talked about the dating game, why I was in it and what I was hoping to get out of it. James asked questions, gave his input. In retrospect, I may have dominated the conversation a little too much. It was date-ish, but at the same time there was an inherent lack of nerves and expectation.

 



Sure, competitive is good,
but nobody likes a hot dog.

We never got to the second game. After our hard reset, we only had enough time to play the first game through once more, properly. I won, though I tried my best to quell my natural competitiveness. We had been there for three hours, but it flew by.

 

He paid for us, and we talked about doing something like this again with a group of our friends, but not as a pair. I would be shocked as hell if he asked me out on another date. But still, it was a good time.