I know it’s been a long, fretful weekend for many but you can sigh in relief as the purity of the Cereal Dater pun – so recently threatened – remains intact. As planned, the Anti-Cereal dater and I met for our agreed-upon beverages on Friday but, once we emerged from Starbucks’s judging eye into the safety of the devil-may-care Farmers Market, I very deftly offered an unassuming granola bar as companion to his security blanket of a coffee (well tea, actually) and, to my great pleasure, he indulged. Apparently rectangularly pre-packaged cereal can be publicly consumed without fear of social castigation. The victory – deliciously satisfying though it was – was short-lived, however, as the Anti-Cereal Dater’s raging discomfort began a-simmering with my request to photographically preserve the moment. He endured it, though, and I like to think he’s a stronger man for it.
All of that took about ten minutes and constituted, I would argue, the most exciting ninth of the date. (For those of you not wanting to do the math, we spent a wild hour-and-a-half together.) The Anti-Cereal Dater is a good guy. He is undeniably the most normal, respectable, and attractive of the lot so far – easy-going, comfortable, confident, and…well…unremarkable. Simple. A little boring. Plain Cheerios, maybe. With 2% milk. And such was our date.
The Anti-Cereal Dater grew up in suburban New Jersey with a businessman father, a math teacher mother, and an older sister. He went to public school. He’s admittedly not a big fan of change and has lived in the same studio apartment since he moved to LA over five years ago. He loves stability. He saves his money. He would love to have a nine-to-five job, if only he could find one he liked. He did study drama at NYU and is an aspiring voiceover artist, which is interesting – kind of fun, kind of cool, kind of different and exciting. But that deep, scary movie trailer voice he boasts? Oh, that’s right… Won’t do it on command. Or in public. Shocker.
The Anti-Cereal Dater likes movies, but not passionately; and sports, but not obsessively. Not big on travel, either, though he’s been to London and would like to visit the very exotic destinations of Ireland and Australia. (Don’t get me wrong, I love Ireland and Australia, but what? Canada’s got too many elk? Too much snow? Too much French?) He did talk about a trip he took to visit a friend in Salt Lake City, recently. It came up more than a few times, actually. I don’t know if they got a couple hookers there, or what, but whatever they did made for a memorable trip. He might even consider living there one day, in fact. For what it’s worth, I don’t think Salt Lake’s for me and when we simultaneously reached for our cell phones to check the time, we mutually understood that the best was behind us.
I emailed the Anti-Cereal Dater over the weekend, though. I couldn’t help myself and asked him to humor me because I had to know: if we were to have met for cereal, instead of coffee, what would have been his cereal of choice? His response:
“Hmmmmm…well I’d say it’d be a close call. As I mentioned, I love Kashi…Heart to Heart is my daily starter for the day. But perhaps my old school favorite, gotta be Fruity Pebbles, lol. They’re just really good. Not very healthy, but extremely tasty. So one of those two, maybe I’d have to bring both because it’d be too hard to decide, haha.”
Huh. I think the Anti-Cereal Dater really wants to be Fruity Pebbles. Maybe his “LOL”s and “haha”s are even indication of the couple inner Pebbles mixed in with all the Kashi. But when it comes down to it, I think the Anti-Cereal Dater is really just a reliable, solid Heart to Heart kind of guy who doesn’t laugh out loud in conversation and doesn’t eat cereal at the Farmers Market.
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