What constitutes a real date?

Years ago I met a guy at a college party. The next week he called me around 7:00 p.m. and said he needed stuff for his apartment, so we decided to go dumpster diving^*. My date arrived on foot, and we spent a couple of hours wandering alleyways in the moonlight. When he found an abandoned couch he wanted, we went to pick up his station wagon, loaded the couch and dropped at his place. We read some stranger’s journal entries in a notebook we’d salvaged, discussed identity formation, made out a little and parted ways. Now it seems like a strange date, but I wasn’t offended at the time.

So what constitutes a real date?
Date (n): an appointment, esp. an engagement to go out socially with someone with someone to whom you’re attracted.

There are hundreds of dating standards in American culture. Dates must be arranged in advance. They should only involve two people. Lunch is a less serious type of date; weekday evenings are more serious; weekend evenings carry the most significance. Who pays for the date is important; splitting the tab is less date-like than having one person treat.

In reality, there are plenty of good reasons for dates to defy these conventions. If the couple is short on funds, spending time hanging out at a friend’s house might have to do. Single parents might opt for a lunch date to avoid babysitting hassles, not out of a desire to keep things casual. If one or both people work nights, sticking to daytime conventions may be pointless. And so forth.

Making the connection
To be true to the connections you form, pay more attention to the connection itself and less to the context of the time spent together. A lunch date where you talked for hours might be more meaningful than a Friday night spent nodding to each other over blaring music. You could get to know someone much better hanging out with mutual friends than by seeing a movie together. And, yes, even searching for a sanitary used couch can be a way to sniff out compatibility.