Andy: Our first date was… interesting. I had read some article about how you should do “Active” first dates because the whole “let’s get coffee” fad had run its course. I recommended go-karts, which in hindsight could have been the moment it all fell apart (Shira hates driving, not that I could have known that at the time). Instead, we settled on mini-golf, which is apparently more of a thing in the Midwest than it is in LA. There was only one mini-golf place that I could find, but I’d be damned if I let that stop me.
I got there 15 minutes early and crammed two bottles of water into the cargo pockets on my shorts. I must have looked like such a dork. Shira’s Uber driver got horribly lost, so she was fairly late. I wish that I could say that when she stepped out of the car that my first impression was something like “I knew she was the one,” or “I was stunned by her beauty.” In reality, I was just completely taken aback by how short she was.
Shira: To be honest, I wasn’t super thrilled about the idea of mini golf – it was, after all, summertime in one of the hottest parts of the country. But as soon as I arrived at the golf course and saw Andy, my mood changed: I immediately texted my best friend Caroline, “Oh shit, he’s really cute!” I soon after found out that Andy was from Michigan, where my dad’s side of the family is, so I was excited to have that in common.
Andy: We went inside, took our brightly-colored golf balls and cheap clubs, and set out for the course. It must have been 95 degrees out there, and I was already drained from waiting out in the sun for her. I don’t remember what we talked about, only that it was the most painful small talk. And to top it off, the whole course took a grand total of 20 minutes to complete. Things were not going well, but for some reason we transitioned to a nearby ice cream place, and then to a beautiful section of nearby Pasadena.
Shira: The golf course ended up being super short – it took us about 15 minutes to get through it. We decided to get some ice cream, and I was secretly very happy to get out of the heat. I found that I enjoyed getting to know Andy and thought he was very down-to-earth and easy to talk to.
Andy: Out of the heat, things started to look up. I remember launching a strange, roundabout, defense of John Kasich (hello, 2016) and rambling about my favorite podcasts for far too long. But nothing of substance really came of it. We just kind of talked for the sake of talking. The details of that are lost to the sands of time. Probably for the best
Shira: However, there was a little more “small talk” than I am accustomed to, and I wasn’t sure whether I’d want to go on a second date! A couple of days afterwards, Andy asked if I’d be interested in seeing a movie with him. Since it was a movie I wanted to see anyways, I decided to go with him.