That one time I entered a Win-A-Date contest

I'm as sappy as they come. A total sucker for anything cheesy and romantic. That's why during college, one of my roommates successfully convinced me to enter a Win-A-Date contest on a cute blog called The Anti-Austen. The blog is filled with stories of the modern dating lives of LDS girls told with the style and flare of a Jane Austen novel. Well, it started accepting submissions for this contest and I just couldn't help myself. In the back of my mind I thought, "huh, if I win this and we actually hit it off, that would be a really cute story."

The prize date was with a guest blogger code-named Colonel Paisley. I didn't really know who he was or really even care. I just really wanted to win so I could say that at one point in my life I'd won something that had to do with dating.

For the submission we were asked to answer as many questions as we could from a provided list in the most creative way possible. 

Here are the questions I chose to answer from the list.

• Your name [of course]
• Height
• Left- or right-handed
• Your favorite joke [can be included separate from the poem if it is long]
• A reference to one of your favorite songs, e.g. “but the man there said the music wouldn’t play” [bonus points if you can name the song]
• Your idea of fun
• Favorite genre of movie
• Manliest man you know – in your own life, from movies, from modern culture, wherever. Explain briefly.
• Cats or dogs?
• EDIT: Please also include your age/year in school and location (aka Provo, Orem, etc.)

My roommate answered her questions with a Shakespearean, iambic pentameter ballad. Dang girl. And since I'm not super creative, I just answered the way I was learning how to answer questions at the time…with newspaper articles. 

I did reach the second round which I was really excited about, but then I tripped the finish line. 

Colonel Paisley answered some of the same questions with a super long, impressive poem. Then he added a personal note at the end:

Hi Sarah! You win extra creativity points because of all the incomplete sentences in your newspaper. It aggravated me [in a good way] and severely piqued my curiosity. I wanna know how those sentences end!

Your last question: What sets you apart from everyone else who applied? What qualities do you possess that make you unique?

I hope you had fun applying. I'm guessing you did, since you made a really cool newspaper. Are you a journalism major?

Have a good night! Write back as soon as you can.

Cheers!

Instead of just replying to his email and answering his questions like a normal person, I thought "hey, I'm going to do something creative AGAIN!" I wish I could go back in time to that moment and just be like "reign it in girl, be cool." Oh well.

I replied back with a full press release about how our date went. Yes, it was written in the future. I know, it kills me. I'm not even going to share it because it still makes me uncomfortable. Needless to say he was probably freaked out and that's why I never heard back from him. 

So instead of having a story about how I met my guy through a Win-A-Date contest, I have a story about how I planned out my future with a guy, freaked him out, and he never called me back. Classic.