About a month ago, S, D, and I realized that we were close to hitting our first huge blogging milestone: our 100th post! That’s right readers, between the three of us, in the last year, we’ve received literally almost 1000 messages, been out with over 40 men, and yet here we are, all still single, and still blogging. You’re welcome. The only reason we haven’t entered into functional, meaningful relationships is because this blog is too hot to stop. Just ask Reddit.

Anyway, in honor of what we are calling “The Centennial,” we wanted to do something special for you, our devoted friends and family readers. During an initial brainstorming session, I posed some preliminary ideas to S:

L: How about we each ask someone on an offline date? Like, go up to a guy on the street or in a bar, and ask him out?

S: Um…have you ever tried that? **

L: No, that’s why it would be fun.

S: Yes, because we are always bumping into really eligible, datable men, in the flesh. Who want to go out with us. Didn’t we get on the internet because we weren’t meeting any men in person?

L: You’re correct. Nevermind. (L forgot a critical part of the story and the main reason I shot this idea down: she proposed that we give ourselves a week to meet an eligible single dude in the flesh, ask him out, and go on a date. A WEEK. If you’ll recall, I was legitimately stressed about my ability to go on one date in a month, while USING AN ONLINE DATING SERVICE! Call me crazy but I thought that may have been just a slightly unrealistic goal to set for our sad selves.)

S: Any other ideas?

L: OMG. I just had a brilliant one.

S: Yes…? (Making a skeptical face and using a skeptical voice. Hrmph)

L: We go on a date, and then we only talk to our date using song lyrics. For example, he could say, “Where are you from?” and I’d say, “just a city boy, born and raised in South Detroit.”

S: You’re from New Jersey.

L: Or, he could say, “Why did you join OKCupid?” and I could say, “I want to know what love is. I want you to show me.”

S: Do you know any other song lyrics besides random 80s ballads?

L: “Like a shotgun bang. What’s up with that thang? I wanna know, how does it hang?” I CANNOT. WAIT. TO. USE. THAT. LINE.  (Laughing hysterically at her own wit. Having trouble breathing).

S: I mean, we have enough trouble meeting dudes as it is; we probably shouldn’t handicap ourselves any more with terrifying behavior like that. (L, you are making me sound like such a sourpuss! I love a Journey/Foreigner power ballad as much as the next girl and you know it. I mean, we did attend an epic Journey concert together in college, if you’ll recall. I just don’t see how speaking to our dates only in song lyrics would make us any LESS single.) (Also, I’m really terrible with lyrics. Not as bad as “the girl with colitis goes by” or “hold me closer, Tony Danza”, but closer to that extreme than I care to admit. So my execution of this kind of exercise would be comically bad/embarrassing, though potentially very endearing? A girl can dream…)

We kicked around some other less brilliant ideas for awhile, and then we had an epiphany!

OK, it wasn’t as groundbreaking as that epiphany, but it will change our lives for the next couple weeks or so. The best online dating stories we’ve heard are actually NOT our own. In fact, the best thing about having a dating blog is having semi strangers who want to be your new friends (#celebproblemz) come up to you and tell you a hilarious, terrible, soul crushing date story. So, in honor of both the amazingly bad stories we’ve heard, and the fantastic, inspiring courage and sense of humor we’ve seen people demonstrate by sharing these stories with us, we’d like to introduce…

STUCU’S WORST ONLINE DATE EVER CONTEST!!!!

Here are the rules to enter:

1. You must tell us about an online date (any service, from Tinder to eharmony, to Christian fucking Mingle, is fine).

2. You must change identifying details (names, website usernames, employers) or be cool with us changing them.

3. We know we can be some wordy mofos, (what do you mean, L? My posts are always succint) but since we’ll be posting multiple submissions try to keep them on the short side. 

4. The story must be true (we obviously have no way of knowing this, but we’ll assume that no one is lame enough to concoct a fake dating tale and send it to us).

5. You must submit your story to stucublog@gmail.com on or before Thanksgiving 2013 (November 28th). Because then we can all spend the evening being thankful we weren’t on your dates. And you can spend the evening being thankful that date is over.

UPDATE: We’ve received a lot of requests to include non-online dates, and we here at Stucu love any dating horror story (it’s always nice to know you’re not alone). Since we’re now accepting terrible date stories of all kinds, the deadline for submissions is now extended to midnight on December 1st. Keep those stories coming, we’ve been laughing WITH you since they started rolling in!

Here is how we’ll pick a winner:

1. We’ll pick our favorite submissions and post them here the first week in December. We’ll keep submissions totally anonymous,  and if needed, seek your permission to edit them down.

2. We’ll set up a poll so readers can vote on their favorite stories.

3. The top 3 submissions will receive our first ever fabulous, exciting, Stucu blog swag! What will they win, S?

That’s right, readers. Three lucky winners will receive a fabulous Stucu canvas tote! Whether you’re filling it with organic kale at your local farmer’s market or stuffing it with clean undies and a toothbrush on your way to see your jump off, this tote gets the job done in style!

Okay, not the most tricked out swag ever, but we can at least all agree we’ve got Paddy’s Pub beat:

Please please please send stucublog@gmail.com your stories, and encourage your friends and friends of friends to send us theirs. It will (hopefully) be like one big cathartic therapy session of dating awfulness where strangers on the internet also laugh at our collective misfortune. Thanks for reading and Happy Blogaversary!

xoxoxo

L, S and D

** Incidentally, I’ve been trying for weeks to work up the courage to do exactly this. You see, I’m hopelessly in love with a total stranger my commuter rail train conductor, who likely thinks I’m mentally challenged based on our limited interactions to date. Though I have no problem initiating contact with a guy online, I get really nervous/flustered trying to do it in person. Typically, one of two things happens: I turn into a virtual mute who openly stares and occasionally manages to string a few coherent words together; or I ramble endlessly. Thus far, my evening commute has been 98% the former (I don’t see him in the mornings until I get off at Back Bay and I either smile sheepishly at him or pretend to be really engrossed in the crossword puzzle, depending on how bold I’m feeling that day). For the entirety of my 45 minute ride home I lurk near the end of the car where he stands chatting with others, pretending to read a book and willing myself to say something, anything, to him. I rarely succeed. When I do, it’s just to say good night as I get off train. Once, before I could say good night, he said “see you in the morning” and I was so excited I almost fell off the train before I managed to squeak out “you most certainly will!”. The two times that we’ve exchanged more than just pleasantries, it was just a few minutes before my stop and he initiated the conversation. While I wasn’t completely awkward or terrible either time, I didn’t do myself any favors either. There was some rambling the first time. I don’t even know if he’s single, I only know there’s no ring. So progress is slow on this front (I would clearly have failed under L’s proposed one week rule), but I’ll keep you fine folks updated if/when the situation advances.