by Jackie Zhang, Staff Writer, February 2022

Valentine’s day has arrived and all of us who aren’t part of the happy couples club have to deal with a day full of atrocious PDA and unbearable gooeyness. Listen, some of us don’t go on dates, not because we don’t have people asking us out (obviously) but because we want to avoid one of *those* experiences. Because dating and being in a relationship do entail the inevitable: awkward and embarrassing dates. 

These horrifically cringey and skin-crawling experiences are one of the unavoidable parts of entering the dating world. So to all those terribly happy couples out there, whose solution to our inevitable dying-alone is to just “get out there and meet new people!!”; these are a collection of experiences that remove any desire from any of us to attempt to date. 

“I was with a group of friends and I had a crush on this girl. I knew that she had a crush on me as well. She and I were ice skating together, we’re helping each other out, and it’s this cutesy thing. I went in for a kiss and slipped and smashed my face against hers. The two of us stood there and looked at each other and she had an anxiety attack and started crying. So that’s how my first kiss went”

 – a humiliated junior 

“While I was in South Africa, this guy asked me on a date and his idea was to skateboard. He really wanted to show me how to do an ollie but he failed really badly. And then he fell on his butt so hard that he broke his phone and had to use my phone for the next month” – a flustered junior 

“Me and my friends decided to go on a double date and we thought it would be a great idea. During the entire date, we were only talking to the other person in the relationship and not with our own dates at all. I was talking with my friend’s girlfriend the entire time and he was talking with my girlfriend the entire time.” – an embarrassed senior

“I was in seventh grade and I went into the Natick Mall for my first date. It was really awkward and me and my date got this bear and put both of our names on the heart thing and then broke up the week after.  That date definitely made the Build-a-Bear workshop an uncomfortable place to frequent in the future. I can hope that they still don’t have that bear.” – an uncomfortable freshman

“I was watching Black Panther with this boy in seventh grade and I started choking on my own spit and I literally couldn’t catch my breath. I was having a coughing fit in the middle of the movie right when it was super quiet. And it was so embarrassing.” – a mortified junior

“I set a date up at the Castle one night and I didn’t go because I forgot about it so he was just eating alone.” – a disconcerted Class III

True love is not worth foraging your way through a series of terrible, awkward, ghastly dates. All single people should just stay home and cry into a pillow because social interaction is definitely not worth all the uncomfortable moments. Get some chocolates and blankets and open up Netflix, single people of Nobles. I promise it’s not worth it to get out of bed.