Disclaimer: This post may not make sense. This post has a really inaccurate title. This post does not exactly encompass the least romantic things I have ever done. This post may actually include the cheesiest romantic things I have ever done, thus meaning it belongs in inverted commas like so: “romantic”. These things (and slash or incidents) are not directly supposed to be related to romance or even related to people I have actually dated.

So, in a nutshell, you’re reading this for pure humour. Or at least, I think you are.

These are in no particular order, and the numbers only serve to feign suspense and make you think that there is a certain order. So, yeah, don’t be fooled. What a perfect post for the shadow of Valentine’s Day, right?

#7: Made a glorious stack of love notes leading up to someone’s birthday.

I am positively sure I did this only once. James’s birthday, a while ago. From Christmas to his birthday, I gave him a box of notes, scrolls and some other stuff in a box. There was a dated note for every day from Christmas through to his birthday in February the next year.

The notes contained endless “I love you” scribbles, doodles of hearts, recounts of moments shared together, and even funny little things like “hug tokens” or “hug coupons”. I know, I was embarrassing. The last gift was a scroll shoved into a clear plastic ball. The plastic ball was pretty hard to open because it was not designed to be opened, it was just built with two separate halves that clicked together. James had a fun time trying to open it without cracking the ball.

There was no awesome magic gift at the end. Sadly.

Verdict: Cheesy. Let’s say mozzarella.

#6: Shared a gummy candy snake with someone, à la the spaghetti scene in The Lady and the Tramp. And someone took a photo of it.

Circa 2008. This was pretty funny, and inexplicably better than the time someone tried to make me share a gummy frog with someone in the same manner. That time, I simply bit the gummy frog in half angrily, and threw the other half at the person that everyone wanted me to kiss.

Verdict: Jarlsberg.

#5: Pretended I had read Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea by Jules Verne just to impress someone.

Kiah probably does not read my blog anymore, but I pretended I had read Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea just so I could sound smart in comparison to him. When we dated, I was forever jealous of his 100%, absolute perfect grade in English. We were not in the same year group (he was younger) but we had the same English teacher. I loved my English teacher at the time. He was my absolute favourite. I don’t know why he couldn’t give me a perfect grading, that hardly seemed fair. Possibly because Kiah was just gifted as all hell and barely did his English homework, so I felt like I was just a leaf on the compost.

For the record, I eventually read the book. Because I do love science fiction and all.

Verdict: Cheese slices (aka plastic cheese).

#4: Sang Whitney Houston’s I Have Nothing line by line in a series of snaps on Snapchat.

The person who got these snaps was on their way to work. The person who got these snaps was not someone I was falling head over heels for. The person who got these snaps was my best friend on Snapchat for the longest time. Enter Tristan, my neighbour of massive proportions. We used to snap each other all day long. All. Day. Long. There were periods of time when it would just be snap after snap after snap, with barely a minute between each snap.

I get really, really, really self-conscious when I sing. I get nervous, embarrassed, and feel uneasy when I sing in front of people. But I like to sing. And Tristan said I had a really nice voice, and he wasn’t ever going to be critical about it, so sing I did. Videos on Snapchat are only allowed to be about twenty seconds long, but I wanted to sing the whole song.

Verdict: Kraft Easy Cheese Spread Cream Cheese 230g.

#3: Sang Whitney Houston’s I Will Always Love You line by line in a series of snaps on Snapchat.

There is only so much Whitney Houston you can sing, so yeah, sing another one from The Bodyguard, right? My vocal range is significantly lower than Whitney Houston’s and I am atrocious at doing her simply majestic melisma over words like “I” and “you”.

So what do I do? Sing it anyway, at a medium-high alto, and so soft no one can really hear me properly.

Verdict: Kraft Easy Cheese Spread Cream Cheese 440g.

#2: Took twenty minutes to say “I love you” to someone.

I was so sure of it at the time. So, so sure. And I was, but nervousness got me down. You kind of wonder, if you are planning to tell someone you love them, does hesitation suggest you actually don’t? In this case, afterwards, I felt like a right fool, because I spent twenty minutes holding his hands and looking at a piece of paper I had scribbled on with a really pathetic speech on it.

You know what he said immediately? “I love you too.” Groan. All that crap for nothing.

Verdict: Camembert.

#1: Asked someone out on a date in Liquid markup.

Liquid is basically a library for Ruby on Rails. It is basically based off Ruby. Ruby is a programming language. Which basically means I asked someone out in geek. Which basically looked like this, crammed into one text message:

{% assign lunch_food = 'something you want to eat' %}
{% assign lunch_location = 'place you want to eat' %}
{% capture lunch %}
  <p>Do you want to get {{ lunch_food }} at {{ lunch_location }}?</p>
{% endcapture %}
{% if tristan.eta > 1200 %}
  {% if tristan.class == nil %}
      {{ lunch }}
   {% else %}
       <p>Are you free for lunch?</p>
   {% endif %}
{% endif %}

I was only asking Tristan if he was free to join me for lunch. Who the hell asks one of their best friends to catch up over pizza in a language they don’t really understand? I mean, yeah, Liquid is pretty self-explanatory, but still. That could have been summed up in one word: “Pizza?”

Verdict: Parmesan.