"I don't get nervous for first dates anymore. If she likes me, great. If not, fuck it. There are 199 other people in Seattle."

— Scott Rosen (@DrObvious) November 20, 2013

As I type these words, I’m thirty-thousand-something miles aloft in the air, somewhere over middle America, en route to Florida for a family gathering that I suspect will confirm one of my long-held theories about my family’s dynamics. (That will be a different post, if it’s a post at all.)

But the point is, unless there’s a remarkable coincidence going on in this metal tube in which I’m currently constrained—and I wouldn’t consider it impossible by any means—I am a thousand miles and counting from anyone I’ve dated for the first time in months.

My friends—or, honestly, anyone who’s a) ever resided in Seattle and b) had more than three conversations with me—have all heard plenty about my Extras Theory, which states that there are only 200 actual people in Seattle, and everyone else is background noise. The story behind its genesis is long-winded and nearly seven years old; the most recent evidence for it isn’t even a week old. Continue reading