What I did on Valentine's Day...

...in 1995.

I was 19 and attending Utah State University.

I was spending my Valentine's night the way most single, fat, socially inept, geeky, 19 year old girls might: On the internet in the computer lab.

Way back in 1995 we didn't have Facebook or instant messaging or anything like that. But if you were in college, you had "Talk." Basically, it was primitive IM-ing. And you had the Finger command where you could look up everyone online at that moment at any college. In 1995 there were usually less than 100 people online at any given time. Then you could choose someone from the list and "Talk" to them on a split screen. I know, it was the freakin' stone age. Some of you reading this weren't even alive in 1995.

So, anyway, apparently there were a few guys who were also single, geeky and dateless that night. They pulled up the list of students who were currently online at USU, went through and "Talked" to every female who's name ended in "i" and invited them to join them for a group blind date. Because, you know, all girls whose names end with "i" are bimbos who will put out. It's common knowledge.

Now, if you know me at all, you know I'm not impulsive. You know that agreeing to go out with a bunch of strangers is not typical behavior for me. But for whatever reason, I agreed. (Maybe because I figured it couldn't be worse than Valentine's Day 1994. Someone--let's just call him Free Bird--went through the trouble of sending me a card postmarked in Loveland, Colorado. Unfortunately the card itself contained a fart joke. Romantic, right?)

The plan was that we'd all meet up at JB's (kind of like Denny's).

There were ten of us--the four geeky, dateless guys and six geeky, dateless girls whose names ended with "i."

The geeky dateless guys had bought us all wilted roses from the about-to-die clearance bin at Smith's, and paid for our dinners.

And oddly, it was a lot of fun.

We talked about the end of Star Trek: The Next Generation, the conspiracy theory that Kurt Cobain was murdered and how lame it was to try to re-enact Woodstock.

In a perfect world I'd go on to tell you how we all bonded and are still friends to this day. But the reality is, we all went our separate ways after dinner at JB's. We all went back to the dorms and continued our, geeky, dateless lives.

I don't even remember their names.

But I remember that I was glad I decided to be impulsive for once.