"Is this a date, or are we just eating in the truck?" Tyler asked. We were parked at Long Branch Lake on a Saturday in April with the picnic blanket still folded on the dash, because the wind had picked up to about 30 miles an hour and a tornado watch had just buzzed on both our phones.
It was a date. It was also a flop, which I'll get to.
We've always been cheap daters, but since the middle of March it's an actual rule. Every spare dollar is going at our credit card, and we still have a few weeks to go, so our fun money is thin. The rule is two dates a month with a $20 cap on each. In a town of about 5,000 with no mall and exactly one movie screen within half an hour, that takes a little planning. Here's every date we've been on since New Year's, the good ones and the ones that made the rule necessary.
The ones we keep doing
Casey's pizza at the lake. A large pepperoni runs us about $16. We take it ten minutes west to Long Branch Lake, park facing the water and eat it off the tailgate while the sun goes down. It isn't fancy. It's the date we do most.
Library swap night. We each go to the library in town and pick out a movie and a book for the other person, no hints allowed. Then we stay home, make a bowl of popcorn and watch whatever the other one picked. Tyler once brought me home a book about how bridges are built. I brought him a romantic comedy. Cost: about $1 of popcorn.
A trail walk. Long Branch State Park doesn't charge to get in, and the trails are quiet on weekday evenings. We bring a thermos of coffee and walk until it starts getting dark. Free.
A gravel road drive. We pick a direction, turn onto the first gravel road neither of us recognizes and follow it until it ends somewhere. Then we sit in the truck bed under a quilt and look at the stars, which out here you can actually see. About $5 of gas.
A high school ball game. Spring is baseball and softball season, and a game at the high school cost us $6 for the two of us. We don't know any of the players anymore. We cheer anyway, and we usually run into three people we know.
The ones that flopped
The movies. Back in January, before the rule, we drove to the one screen within half an hour of us. It shows one movie at a time, and the night we went it wasn't a good one. Two tickets, a popcorn and a drink came to $34, plus gas. We spent the drive home agreeing we would rather have had two Casey's pizzas.
Steak night at home. In February I decided two ribeyes at home would be cheaper than dinner out. It was, sort of. The steaks were $22, plus $5 for mushrooms and a bagged salad. I set off the smoke alarm, Moose howled at the smoke alarm, and Gloria knocked from next door to make sure we weren't on fire. That's $27, and nobody relaxed.
The windy picnic. Sandwiches, chips and cookies, about $9 worth, packed for the first warm Saturday in April. The weather didn't read my plans. We ate in the truck with the radio on, listening to the watch get extended to two more counties. We laughed about it the whole way home, so I'm only calling it half a flop.
The tally
| Date | Cost | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Casey's pizza at the lake | $16 | Keeper |
| Library swap night | $1 | Keeper |
| Trail walk at Long Branch | $0 | Keeper |
| Gravel road and stars | $5 | Keeper |
| High school ball game | $6 | Keeper |
| Movie out of town | $34 | Flop |
| Steak night at home | $27 | Flop |
| Windy picnic | $9 | Half a flop |
That's eight dates for $98, or about $12.25 each. Take out the two expensive flops and the other six came to $37 all together, which is a little over $6 a date.
What I've noticed is that the best ones cost almost nothing, and the two that cost the most were the ones we liked least. I don't think that's an accident. The good dates are the ones where we're outside, or where we're paying attention to each other instead of to a screen or a stove. The expensive ones were us trying to copy what a date is supposed to look like somewhere bigger.
Once the card is paid off, we might bump the cap to $25. Or we might not. So far the extra $5 hasn't been what was missing.
