So you’re fully vaccinated and ready to emerge from your year-long cocoon. So you’ve downloaded the dating apps. So you’re lacking what some might call “traditional personality traits”. But don’t let that stop you! Even boring people can fall in love!

There’s a reason that people like Vanilla Ice Cream, Katy Perry and family vacations to Orlando. This isn’t the end of the world! Here are some quick tips to feign an interesting personality for that coffee date:

1. Decide to be gluten intolerant that day. Make sure to mention this every five minutes. Best case scenario, the conversation turns to talk about what kind of rice you should avoid. Worst case scenario, you fall into an improvised rant about the things that breadcrumbs do to your large intestine. 
2. Recite the names of each Care Bear you owned from grades 2 through 4. The downside here is that you’ve chosen to portray your former ownership of an overpriced children’s collectible toy as your entire identity. The upside is that you now have, what a romantic comedy might call, on its best day, a quirky temperament. Lean into that.
3. Explain to him, in detail, a time when you thought you saw something shiny but were wrong. Was it a spoon? Some tin foil? A handheld mirror? Make him work for it! Be sure to apologize when the punchline of the story is that there wasn’t actually anything shiny. You did waste his time, after all. But at least you filled the void of silence with your voice.
4. Try to recount details from the last Broadway show you saw way back in 2016. Be sure to really sell him on the plot, even though you got half the details wrong and you’re coming off vaguely racist. Hacing seen one show one time might qualify as a half personality trait in some cultures. Not America, but you know.
5. Start a game where the two of you have to go back and forth naming a type of fruit. Do this until one person can’t think of one. Allow your semi extensive knowledge of interesting fruits suffice as a characteristic. Use this as an excuse to prove you’ve heard of dragonfruit. Who knows what this guy’s into!?
6. Bring him, slideshow-style, through a presentation of the photos in your camera roll that once served as your lock screen background. People with personalities definitely do this, so you’ll be sure to keep up the ruse. 
7. Ask him about his favorite type of nut milk. This tip only works if you say “nut milk” at the beginning of each sentence for this chunk of the conversation. Don’t be afraid to tell him that his nut milk of choice is lacking in calcium or harmful for the environment. Men eat that shit up. Hello, second date!
8. Segue into a long and detailed rant about which A-list Jennifer wears a choker the best. Aniston? Lawrence? Garner? Try to fill 15 minutes on this topic alone. Men tend to be really into this kind of thing.
9. Ask him about his most common recurring nightmare and then attempt to psychoanalyze it with your very limited knowledge of dreams from a class you took in high school. If any part of the dream remotely sounds like a death omen, be sure to make that very clear. Nothing can spice up a relationship like a deadline. (Get it?)
   
   
   
   Hannah Benson is a comedian, artist and recruiter based in New York City. She enjoys having strong opinions about things and getting validation in the form of a room of laughs. When not writing, Hannah enjoys greeting dogs (and not their owners) on the street, speaking about her vegan lifestyle and shaming those who don’t do the same, making in-depth parodies of ‘The Bachelor’ and organizing every piece of kitchenware multiple times a day. She has performed standup comedy for the past five years, has had work featured in The Weekly Humorist and Robot Butt and makes fun of people she meets on the daily.