The Definition of Maturity

is: to have the foresight to know that one's momentary excitement will dissipate with the passing of time.  A  mature person makes choices based on the knowledge of this foresight, no matter how ideal the aforementioned momentary excitement might seem.  For example, an adult knows that no matter how delicious chocolate might be, eating a pound of it will result in a stomach ache a short time later.  Weighing these two options against each other, said adult will choose to eat an ounce of chocolate and savour it.

By this measure, I am a five-year-old who just gorged on a bag of candy corn.  Or who has made a date to do so at 8:00 tonight.

A week or so ago, I started talking to this guy, who I'll call Q (I'll explain in my entry post-date).  Q and I have a TON of shared experiences: we both studied in Rennes for a semester (5 years apart) and adored it, we were both assistants in small-town France, and we both have a thing for condiments.  In terms of okcupid messages, I really like this guy.  And so, for our date tonight, we decided to embrace the whole France thing and go for some wine.  Now, Q lives about an hour away from Philly (he's moving here in a week), and so we scheduled our date for a bit later on in the evening.  Under normal, indifferent-feeling circumstances, I would have opted for something quick, risk-free, and easy to get out of, but on a Monday night at 8 with a guy who is communing two hours here and back to meet me, I think it would have been a hard thing to pull off either way.  Not to mention, when we planned this thing, I was all dopey smiles.  So what do I push for?  Dinner at a BYOB bistro.  Dinner.  A 1 or 2 hour commitment.  Stupid.  Just because this guy has had a similar life to me (in some regards) does not mean we'll be compatible.  All I could think about on my walk home was: how many male assistants did I loath?  Well, not that many, but that's because it's a 9:1 female/male ratio, and most of those males were gay.  But the ones I did know, aside from this wonderful gay Irishman, didn't really do anything for me.  And that non-effect, in this scenario, could be even worse than loathing.

So, in an hour and a half, I will gorge.  Because that's what my moronic hopeless-romantic side told me to do.  Stay tuned for what comes.