Match Maker, Match Maker Make Me a Match

Let me start this blog by saying that Chelsie Pridmore and Dottie Lee are a terrifying combination. Of all the girl friends I have, I think I plot more evil schemes with her than with anyone else. And that's really saying something, because I have had some scheming friends in the past.

Chelsie and I already made our mark in Maadi Community School with our practical jokes. So now that it is nearing my time to go, we simply had to have one more ultimate practical joke. And oh, this one was brilliant.

Only a week and a half ago, the church got a new youth leader and a new youth intern to come out and start working with the youth here. They are nice guys, but my first experiences with them have just been a bit different than I normally would have with people I am just getting to know. So it had been this weird sort of mix of thinking that these are completely nice guys who would fit in great in our circle of friends, yet still feeling uncomfortable around them (it's just too long of a story for me tonight). Anyhow, Chelsie has had a few conversations with them about how they didn't want people setting them up or match making them. And we all know how it is in the church. There are like 20 single girls for every single guy. So I can only imagine the scenarios that arise from these circumstances.
So Chelsie and I invited Travis and Kelly (or should I say "so and so" and "so and so #2") over for dinner and some games of pool. We told them that we would get a group of people together and it would be a fun, relaxed, hang out night. In our defense, when we invited them it was completely innocent and with pure intentions. But our evil sides quickly got the better of us. So we told T and K to come over at 6:30. We told two of our unsuspecting girlfriends (Adiam and Alexa) to come at 6:45. Then everyone else we invited we told them to come over at 7:15-7:30. We spent half of the day in preparation. Grocery shopping, cooking a nice meal, picking out the nicest table setting, placing candles all over the apartment, buying a flower arrangement, picking out the evening's sound track (Toni Braxton, Enrique Inglesias, the Dirty Dancing soundtrack, Seal, etc.). Chelsie and I dressed up nicely and did make up, and generally made the effort to look like we had gone out of our way to look nice. We set the table for four, lit all the candles and waited for our guests/victims to arrive. T and K were supposed to arrive first, but it turned out that the girls (A and A) came early (at 6:30) and the boys were a few minutes late.

So the four of them are there with us in the kitchen. I'm cooking, Chelsie's getting drinks and then she shoos them out of the kitchen, insisting that I can't get my cooking done properly with all these people in the way. So they move out to the living room, while Chelsie and I stay in the kitchen. I might mention that the two girls don't really know each other, nor do they know the guys. Chelsie and I really are the tying factor, but I give them credit that they made pretty comfortable conversation for being practically strangers. So then we serve the meal. At this point, they are realizing that there are six of us here but only four place settings. They are like "aren't you guys gonna eat with us?" And Chelsie just replies with something like "no, we just really wanted to do something special for you all tonight" (all the while Seal and Dirty Dancing are playing in the background). It was apparent that at the least, Travis was catching onto what we were doing and maybe Kelly was too. Poor Adiam was completely confused. Alexa was just happy to be eating. So we scurry back to the kitchen. Chelsie did a marvelous job of making the evening weird and awkward. She would occasionally go back to the dining room and offer them more salad, drinks, etc. I, however, could not bare to look at any of them without laughing. Back in the kitchen, Chelsie and I giggle and then we try and come up with a good way to just end the joke. We decide that we will change back into our jeans and t-shirts and fix out plates and just go sit down at the table with them. No sooner do we change than our next guest rings the doorbell. It's Matthew. We grab him and bring him straight to the kitchen. We are explaining to him what is going on when Esther arrives. So she comes to the kitchen too. They get a brief overview of the scheme and we all fix our plates and sit down at the table. A minute or two passes, before we just tell them what was going on and we all have a good laugh about it. After that we only had one more guest come (Shariff). The night was really fun. We told some of our most embarassing moments (Matthew won with his story of having diarrea in front of an entire Indian village). We played pool, smoked sheisha and just enjoyed each others company.

Luckily for Chelsie and I, none of these people were offended by our rediculous schemes. It was all good fun and makes for a good story. Yay. I am happy.