Blind Dates in Old Time Radio

There was a time when all marriages were arranged, which meant that you did not choose your mate yourself. Sometimes, you were not introduced to the person you were going to marry until you appeared together at the altar, and it was not until the wedding night that you had a chance to get to know one another. Talk about pressure!

In modern times, we get to find and choose our own mate. This should help to guarantee our future happiness, but to find our perfect mate we need to meet a lot of eligible people. Just because they are eligible for marriage does not guaranty that they are going to be a perfect choice, but the important thing is to have a choice.

Dating is the accepted method of finding and getting to know the ideal mate. If you are a normally attractive person in a typical social setting, you should have no problem attracting some interest from the opposite sex and should have plenty of chances to date. Assuming that there is enough mutual attraction for you both to agree to the date in the first place, you should have enough in common to make the date a fun experience even if you find that there is not enough common ground to build a long-term relationship. However, your friends, who supposedly want to see you find happiness, may have other ideas about who you should date.

Being set up for a blind date is one of the oldest and most reliable sitcom tropes because there is sure to be some hilarity, so long as you are not one of the people on the date. To be fair, every day someone discovers their soul mate on a blind date that was set up by a mutual friend. However, the potential for a blind date to run off the rails is very real and very common.

Sometimes one person on the date is simply looking for some companionship and a good time while the other person has a more ambitious agenda. Red Skelton senses there could be trouble when he rings at his date's door and the bell plays the wedding march. Sometimes the date is simply not someone you would go out with if you found them on your own. Phil Harris sets Jack up with a date for New Year's Eve, and later all of Jack's friends ask him about the orangutan they saw him with.

For all the blind date horror stories we hear, sometimes they do go well. Henry Aldrich helps his friend Homer by setting him up with a blind date after Gloria cancels on him. Bob Hope has some interesting experiences on blind dates over the years, but let's face it, what girl would date Bob on purpose?

In the end, it is best to remember that the person who set you up on your blind date is truly hoping that you will have a good time, even if you do not find your soul-mate. Here is one last piece of blind dating advice: keep a wide selection of OTR programs handy on your MP3 player, that way if you do run out of things to talk about, at least you will have something you can laugh at together.