So a friend of mine sent me a message, out of the blue, that a friend of his was coming to Hawaiʻi from Korea and asking if I'd be willing to take her around. Being, well, me, I agreed and asked for a bit more information. The only information I received was she was an attorney and she liked the outdoors. That's it. Really. I am totally serious. I have no idea what he told her about me. After I agree, I started wondering what I was getting myself into.
At first I tried not to think about it. I genuinely do like showing people my home. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized this was like a blind date, a set-up except with one big difference: with a blind date you can always find some way out and end it. Being a blind tour guide, you don't have very much options unless you want to be a total ass. I even started to wonder how good her English was. After all, she worked with him in Seoul.
I felt better about the English part after a few messages but still, what would this be like? What if I met her and just totally didn't like her? It suddenly hit me as I went to pick her up that this was like a blind date but worse in a real, visceral fashion. It occurred to me to begin wondering what she would think of ME. Which is actually pretty unusual for me. If you know me well enough, you know I really don't care whether someone likes me or not. I like myself the way I am, thank you very much, and if you don't like me, well, that's not really my problem now is it?
Still, I put all of this aside as I waited for her in the lobby of her hotel and it did not help that she was running late. I kept myself busy by texting a friend about all of this. I figured that my friend in Seoul thought this was a good idea and he doesn’t have a perverse sense of humor. So I went with it...
It worked out all right. It turned out to be a long day, but not in a bad way. In a decidedly good way. I was enjoyed our time together and I do think she did too. It also goes to show that sometimes... things just work out. It doesn’t mean I'm going to be doing this blind tour guide thing all the time though.
*For clarification, I did not come up with the term "blind tour guiding". The tourist I was taking around came up with the term as we had dinner.
