Twenty-Mile Problem... Part Two

Well, good, glad to hear the prom went well, and welcome back, don't be a stranger. We told you you should go for it, didn't we?

You've had one very good date. You don't need to say anything about a relationship yet. Tell her the truth--every time you see her you have a great time, every time you talk to her you have a great time. You'd like to do more of it. Would she? See how it goes.

It's summer, for gods' sake. Take advantage of it.Can you borrow your parents' car? Go to the beach, go to a museum (which might very likely be the kind of thing she might enjoy and most guys wouldn't think of asking her to do), go cruising for burgers, carpe diem, bro. As you get older, you get more mobile. And you live in California--20 miles there is like being in your neighbor's backyard. I'm in Massachusetts. Twenty miles here and you're in another state. Do not delay.

How was her tiramisu?

Get a hold of the DVD of "We Bought a Zoo". Pay particular attention to Lily and Dylan. Remember "20 seconds of completely insane courage is all you need. Twenty seconds" (that will make sense when you've seen it). Suggest she watch it too, if you like it.

All right, I've been thinking about this, and I think you have to address this as the two future engineers you are. Engineers do not take what fate throws at them. They change the parameters, redefine the problem, and configure a new solution. In particular, engineers, given five remaining weeks of summer, do not wait three weeks to see each other.

Here is a template for a plan. Build on it, modify it, start from scratch, but do SOMETHING. To start, tell her what you think of her: that you think she's very, very smart, very witty, very nice, and gorgeous. In short, you think she's wonderful, and you can't believe your good fortune in knowing her, and the one thing you most want to do this summer is to see her again. Then, and here's where the 20 seconds of completely insane courage comes in, you invite her to your house for the weekend, or if that's too radical, do the fallback,Plan B, invite her for the day.

You have before this step mobilized your resources and examined the infrastructure. You've asked your parents if they're interested in maximizing their son's happiness. You will have noted by now that 20 miles is a minimal obstacle, maybe, given CA roads, a half-hour's driving time each way, an hour total to get her there. Can you borrow the car yet, or will they spend the hour for you and drive you there to bring her back? Maybe if she says yes, she could get her parents to drive one way too.
Do you have any place in your house she could crash for the night. You tell your parents that of course you assume they'd chaperone, to make sure there's no hanky-panky (or minimal hanky-panky at least)going on, and to reassure her parents. tell your parents that you really think she''s special and you'd really like to do this.
Consider that you've got all your accumulated loot, and what better is there to spend it on? Even in California there have to be taxis, and 20 miles would be expensive, but that's like a ride to an airport, which will cost you something, but not an arm and a leg.

You've figured out things to do--is there a beach, a pond, a pool? Have her bring her running shoes and you can run laps at the school track, or run cross country somewhere. California has a population of ten million foodies, we know that. Someone must have opened an interesting restaurant, or two or three, near you, or else someone is seriously letting down the rest of the country's image of you guys. Do a restaurant crawl, two days, six cool places to eat. Is there someone who's opened a cooking school or does classes near you? Sign you both up for a class. Buy a two-person hammock for the backyard, and the two of you grill dinner for your family.

She may not be ready for that step. She may be totally flabbergasted. She may be totally excited. You'll never know if you don't ask. 20 seconds of insane courage.

Hey, you can even blame us if you want. Tell her this was completely new to you and you didn't want to blow it, so you found this forum of old farts online, who'd been around the block a few times and had strong opinions, usually conflicting ones, on anything at all and were perfectly willing to offer them on the least provocation, so you asked what to do (anonymously, of course), and we told you she sounds lovely and you'd be a fool not to ask her.

And on third thought, I'd modify that idea to telling her in some detail what you think of her, that she's marvelous, and then broaching the idea of her coming to visit if you can work out the logistics, and seeing if she's receptive to that first. If she is, the two of you should have a lot of fun figuring out exactly how to do it.

Firstly, Monterey Jack, thank you for the very thoughtful and extensive response.

The tiramisu was very well done… if she hadn’t gone into so much detail describing its creation while we were driving in the car that day, I would have thought it had been professionally baked. Needless to say, it was thoroughly enjoyed.

As it is, we both are working at different universities at summer internships (living in dorms), so we’re both occupied until August anyway. We do talk at night though, and there’s plenty going on to discuss (I’m working on photovoltaic modules, and she’s dealing with mathematical modeling).

She is indeed very witty and smart (and I’m not one to throw those words around)... I’ve told her this before, but she reacts like “pwaah, you’re saying that to make me feel better”. I haven’t directly said that she is physically attractive too though… she has a really nice figure, and a very cute smile. She is also a foot shorter and fifty pounds lighter, but I doubt that’s a serious factor.

However, I don’t think I should invite her for the night… that may give the wrong impression, especially to our parents. What I can do is simply ask her over to my house for the day, since she hasn’t actually been there yet. I have plenty of interesting inventions and activities there that I feel she would be eager to see for herself. For example, before leaving for the internship, I had built (purely for recreation) a homemade smoke grenade launcher using stump remover, sugar, baking soda, PVC, and two springs. When I had mentioned this to her, she said sounded awesome and that it was neat that I could sit down and design it from scratch. She was thoroughly intrigued by the technical aspects of it as well (oxidizer reacting with fuel for the grenades and the pump-shotgun design of the launcher), so I don't think she was just saying it to humor me. It may not be the most conventional way to spend the day, but do you think it would be meaningful to her?

If she asks why, I will indeed say that I honestly think she is a uniquely amazing person who I have been hoping that I could spend more time with. If I put myself in her shoes, I actually don’t see herself just rolling her eyes and telling me she has better ways to spend a summer day.