Dating With Lazy Evaluation

I regularly apply engineering principles to everyday life. It's my effort to try to demystify complicated and incomprehensible things like dating. It doesn't seem to help much, but it is entertaining to me and the nerds I share it with. This blog's captive audience, if existent, might have a low trekkie to socialite ratio. That ratio may go up after nerdy posts like this. Oh well.

"In computer programming, lazy evaluation (or delayed evaluation) is the technique of delaying a computation until such time as the result of the computation is known to be needed. The actions of lazy evaluation include: performance increases due to avoiding unnecessary calculations..." -Wikipedia

Lazy evaluation is pretty cool. You don't do something until you are sure that it is necessary.

Yesterday my friend called me to tell me a funny story. Friend has told me many times about Girl, who is replete with attractive qualities. He hasn't yet succeeded in going out with her, though he has tried a time or two. Friend knew that Girl worked on the day of a very expensive concert. He didn't have tickets, and they've been sold out for a long time. Never having succeeded in asking her out, and knowing about her work that day, he almost jokingly invited her to the concert.

Friend: "So do you have to work on Thursday?"
Girl: "Yeah, why?"
Friend: "Darn. I was going to invite you to __________. "
Girl: "Well, I could shift things around!"

My friend is now committed to the date. He will probably end up spending over a hundred dollars getting the tickets on eBay, though she assumes that he already has them. Rather than laugh at him, I admire his genius. He's using lazy evaluation with his date! He didn't bother getting the tickets until he knew it was worth the effort. If it makes computers more efficient, it should do the same for dating, right? Besides, having very expensive tickets and nobody who wants to use them with you... that problem stinks. I would know.

UPDATE: He spent $100 on each of two front row tickets. She backed out two hours later. *mutters something about fickle women*