Item Detail
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RM's First Date
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2/6/2017
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Provo, Utah
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Female
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Sandy, Utah
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Midwest
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20
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Friend
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White
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LDS
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Jenna is a\rsophomore at Brigham Young University.
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Jenna is my roommate. We live in a modest apartment south of Brigham Young University campus along with four other girls. We were sitting on our couches talking about dating and boys, as often happens in our apartment. Jenna referenced a bad dating story she'd heard before, and I asked her if I could record it for my folklore class. At the beginning, I was the only one listening to the story, but by the end two of my other roommates had joined us. I thought the story was sad because I empathized with the embarrassment felt by Jenna's counselor on this date, but it was also funny. The four of us laughed about it together.
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Aspen Grove is a University owned resort up Provo Canyon in Utah. Brigham Young University has a heavy LDS population, and many students leave on religious missions for a period of eighteen months for girls, or two years for\rboys. These full-time missionaries for the LDS church do not listen to popular music or watch popular media for the duration of their service, treating themselves as separate from the world, so they are ‘behind' when they return. Returned Missionaries are often referred to as RMs. It is an accepted cultural belief that newly returned missionaries are awkward and incapable of normal behavior, even in situations where they once might have been very comfortable. Students often refer to their future spouse as their ‘eternal companion' because of the LDS belief in eternal marriages and families.
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RM, returned missionary, awkward date,
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The story was recorded and later transcribed. The words um and uh were edited out. Occasionally the words and so, and like were edited out for clarity.\r\rText: So back when I was a wee freshman, I went to a foundations of leadership camp up at Aspen Grove, and one of my councilors there was telling us about his worst date experience. He was telling us how he was a fresh RM, excited to be back into BYU, back into real life, back to find his eternal companion. And so he's in this chemistry class, and they had this extra credit assignment where they could go to Sub-Zero and get ice cream and then write up something about it, because liquid nitrogen and what-not. It's science ice cream. And so he kind of liked this girl in his class, so he was like, I'm going to ask her out, and we're going to go to Sub-Zero together. Cause that way it's fulfilling an assignment but it's still a date, but it's not out of nowhere. So he asked her, and they went, and they were having a grand old time. It was going fantastic. He was patting himself on the back – no awkward fresh RM for me. And they're walking back, and she's\rflirting with him, and she's punching him in the shoulder, and he's inwardly doing a dance, thinking – nailed it! I've got a second date in the bag! And then they get to her apartment complex, and she's on one of the upper floors. There were speakers playing throughout the complex and a song came on, and she commented on it. She looked over and said, "Oh do you know who sings this?" And him being him, he's thinking – I've been out of the world for two years, I have no idea. So he looks at her and he says, "I- I don't know." And something in his brain just snapped, and he was freaking out, like – I've been doing so well! We're almost to her door. I can't have a moment of silence, but I don't know the answer to her question. And so all the way up to her apartment door he just said, "I- I don't know. I don't know! I'm not- I don't know! I dunno. You know, I don't know." And so, they got to her door and she said, "ok\rgreat thanks, bye." and shut the door. And he just felt so awful, and especially because some part of his mind was conscious enough to count the fact that he said "I don't know" seventeen times. And so he just walked back to his apartment in a very sad and downtrodden way. It was so awkward. Poor guy!
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Samantha Mourik
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Mourik
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Female
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23
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Engl 392
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Eric Eliason