Rules for Dating

Before you ask...No I am not trying to get back in the dating scene!  I am happily married to the best husband ever!  I just happen to have a lot of wonderful, single friends who I thought could benefit from this information...or really just get a laugh out of it. :)

When I was in 9th grade we had to take Health as part of our PE class for a quarter.  Coach Coggins was our PE/Health teacher and he was quite a character.  Larger than life, deep bellowing voice, sarcasm out the yin yang, and he wore old-school New Balance everyday.  He used to yell into the Girl's locker room "ROLL CALL" (I'm pretty sure just to scare us). He had a particular hatred for Freshmen.  He called us the scum of the earth.  We were all terrified of him but loved him at the same time.

So we sat down in the auditorium for Health class and read the chalkboard (yes we used chalkboards back then). "Coach Coggin's Rules for Dating".  We all thought to ourselves "this ought to be good". We would never say it out loud of course for fear of...well I'm not quite sure. 

Coach Coggins got up in front of the class and told us that dating would be simple if we followed his three rules:

1.  BE CLEAN

2.  BE ON TIME

3. HAVE A PLAN

Looks simple enough right?  Some brave soul asked, "is that really all there is?"
Coach answered, "Of course not! But if you follow these basic rules, you'll have a good foundation for the other stuff."

These three rules have stuck with me all of these years.  Using these rules, you can pretty much tell how a date is going to go or whether or not you will go on a second date.  If the person who asks you out a date smells...well that is a huge strike against them.  I still remember Coach Coggins screaming "Just take a  shower! "  I think this applies to stinky cologne too though.  Less is more people!

If the person is late, that is a cardinal sin in my book!  Punctuality is very important.  It shows the person you are meeting/picking up that you care about the date enough to be on time.  If you are running late, you probably have a cell phone...please use it!  You are not being mysterious by not communicating, you are being a jerk.

Having a plan is also very important.  If your plan is just to "hang out" then you are so unoriginal and need to take some kind of creative writing course or something to broaden your imagination.  Make the date fun. Do something out of the ordinary. They have websites for this kind of thing if you are that clueless. It doesn't have to be expensive or grand...but it does have to be fun!

My first date with Sam was awesome.  He took me to a DC Talk concert.  I think this was during the Jesus Freak tour.  The show was great and we had so much fun! It took a lot of pressure off not having to talk the entire time and we could just enjoy each others' company. That led to many other dates and then 5 months later we were engaged, and then married 6 months after that. I love that man!

Bottom line:  if the simple things are out of the way (cleanliness, punctuality, and plans), then you can really get to know the person: What do they want to be when they grow up? What kinds of things are they into? What kind of music do they listen too? How do they feel about issues that are near and dear to your heart? Etc. etc. etc...

Thanks Coach Coggins for these 3 simple rules for dating.  Many have benefited from your wisdom.  And many still have nightmares about your class :)