Pinch pennies, not romance, in the recession

On a Sunday night I found myself at a soup kitchen in the Bronx. No, not to volunteer – I was on a date.

You've got to be kidding me.

Yes, a date.

A 23-year-old dude took me to a soup kitchen because he “… didn’t want to spend a lot of money.” Or any money at all, apparently.

So I sat there while he scarfed down plates of food and checked his email on his iPhone, completely oblivious to all the people around us who had all of their worldly possessions in a single plastic bag. Then he got mad at me for not eating.

“It’s free food,” he said. “Eat up! I don’t want to hear you complaining about being hungry later.”

He didn’t have to worry about that because I hopped on the 2 train and went straight home, where I opened a can of generic brand ravioli and had myself a good laugh.

A soup kitchen? What would possess this guy to think taking someone on a date there would be a good idea? Soup kitchens are for the needy. You, sir, may have student loans to pay off and are currently working full-time at Starbucks — but you are not needy. You have no place in a soup kitchen unless you’re volunteering.

We’re still in the midst of the recession and we’re all broke. Many Millennials have just gotten out of college and are either forking over more Sally Mae cash for graduate school, like me, or are trying to find that first “real job,” like Soup Kitchen Dude. That doesn’t mean that romance and creativity need to go by the wayside. There are plenty of ways to craft a good date without taking out another student loan or signing over your first born…or frequenting a soup kitchen.

One of the best dates I’ve ever been on cost the guy roughly $10. He bought two coffees and subway fare and we walked over the Brooklyn Bridge at night. It was romantic and cheap. Romance cannot blossom in a soup kitchen while I’m sitting next to a toothless guy who’s calling me “shorty,” and feeling supremely guilty for taking up a chair that someone who has yet to eat today could be using.

Have we become so stressed out because of our finances (or lack thereof) that we’ve lost our creativity, our zeal for life and our ability to relate to people? Is this why we’re not getting jobs? Are we zombie drones who have lost their joie de vivre?

Thirty-five percent of us have asked for money from family members and 50 percent of us admit to being stressed out about our cash flow. Is our libido for life and romance really and truly deceased? How do we fix it?

We accept it and move on. We’re all broke. You, Soup Kitchen Dude, are not special.

I recently called Soup Kitchen Dude to ask him why on earth he took me to a soup kitchen on a date.

“I thought all dates had to include dinner,” he said. “And I’m broke so I thought it would be different and fun.”

Different, it was. Fun, it was not.

I quickly explained to him the error of his ways. A date can be anything–curl up on your couch with a $8 bottle of Arbor Mist (or even a $3 bottle of Boone’s Farm); coffee and a walk in the park, a free art gallery, a museum. Dates are about spending time together, not the destination or amount of money spent. All it takes is a bit of creativity or a quick Google to come up with something cheap, yet not completely inappropriate (LOOK, I even did it for you).

We need to get our mojo back. We need to stop worrying about money and get back to what makes us one of the most brilliant, fun-loving and social generations of all time. I’m not saying ditch all of our responsibilities in favor of going out, getting plastered and hooking up.  I’m saying that we’re all in the same financial boat and every now and then, we need to let down our guards and go back to being who we were in college…just with less tequila and higher standards.

For being one of the most educated generations, we’re acting really dumb. This is life, not rocket science.

Photo by yourdon