Earlier this summer I had my first and only Tinder experience. After swiping left and right for days, and having boring conversations with countless people, I eventually matched with him. Age? 27. Name? We’ll call him “unicycle-guy” for this story. Appearance? His picture displayed him holding a pineapple next to his face with his blonde dreadlocks tied up to resemble the juicy fruit next to him. That’s basically all the information Tinder provides.
He messaged me and right away asked me out. Without even having one conversation with him, I agreed to meet up. His plan for our first date? Unicycling.
We planned to meet at the Seawall where I’d rollerblade and he’d unicycle. I was sitting on a bench waiting when I saw him ride up on his unicycle. He was wearing a spandex biking outfit, was quite tall, and still had the blonde dreadlocks. He stood out a bit.
The first date went well. We rode around and talked a bit about ourselves. He told me about his plans to either visit India or go to UBC in the fall. We smiled a lot, and he was a nice enough guy. After the short date, he rode me back to my volunteer job.
He then messaged me again the next day suggesting we go out to dinner. I was impressed by unicycle-guy’s planning skills; he seemed to be playing no games and just wanted to have a good time. The plan was for him to pick me up from work, so obviously everyone in the office soon found out about my Tinder date. While showing my coworkers his Facebook profile I noticed something odd written at the bottom — his stated age was incorrect.
He didn’t even have the guts to say he was 17, and that he had lied about his age on his profile.
I got in his car, and within five minutes of us driving to the restaurant I asked him what his actual age was. He responded with, “Oh, well, I’m turning 18.” He didn’t even have the guts to say he was 17, that he had literally just graduated high school, or that he had lied on his profile.
Now, I’m not opposed to people dating people of different ages (and I especially don’t like the stigma regarding older women dating younger men), but this guy was just too young for me. Two years isn’t a big difference in age when you are a bit older than I am, but when your date is still not considered an adult in the eyes of the law, it makes you reconsider things.
I felt bad because I knew this relationship wasn’t going to work out, but we still had plans to go to this semi-fancy restaurant. Once I knew his actual age, more of his immaturities began to surface. Though I still thought he was a real nice guy, I noticed he really didn’t have much of anything to say. At least the food was really good!
He drove me home, and somewhere out of my crazy singlehood mind I just wanted to be sure, so I kissed unicycle-guy.
I went in for just a peck, and got a lot more than I asked for. I jerked back, gave his blonde dreadlocks one last pat and went inside.
I knew this wasn’t for me and wanted to make that clear. I messaged him with the honest truth: that I thought he was a nice guy, but that I just didn’t think we’d work together. He then replied with a very long message explaining how that isn’t how I truly felt, and that kissing him meant I really did like him. He implied that I was a nervous person that was too scared to try new things, or get what I wanted. Needless to say, I never saw unicycle-guy again.
Though I sometimes wish I had sent one last message saying: FYI, in the post-high school world, it really isn’t cool to tell someone else how they feel.
