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I do not understand dating.

I find the idea of "going on a date" awkward, contrived and just plain strange. I'm not sure why.

My faithful sample cohort (friends of mine, single and over 30) have told me that they go on dates because meeting potential partners requires planning and scheduling. The alternative is to hang out, blatantly scoping the crowd and taking one's chances.

In any case, from my own experience and that of my sample cohort, I have determined that for a single person older than 30 years of age, looking for romance in a college town is not quite the same process as it would be in a large city.

It's a curious thing, kind of like a kitten. Unlike a kitten, it is not cute.

First of all, the age bracket is just a little unbalanced. Now, I'm fortunate in that I enjoy the company of people of all ages, and people of all ages seem to like me, too. It helps that I am something of a big kid, who still finds all this grown-up stuff a little surreal.

I would never, for example, seriously echo the sentiments of a good friend of mine who's about my age, in referring to the social scene in most of downtown Blacksburg as "Toddler Night at the Sandbox." That's a witty quip, but cynical and not quite accurate.

Secondly, there is the matter of balancing an exciting social life with advanced study or an isolating career. This doesn't lend itself to a lot of hanging out.

Certainly I'm not the only person facing this conflict. Most of the ambitious single people I know have a terrible time trying to date or even spend time with their existing groups of friends. It gets lonely.

Talking about loneliness seems so sappy and desperate, almost a little crazy. It's like going out with your hair up in curlers. Nevertheless, there it is.

Dating shouldn't be so hard to understand. Arrangements are made in advance to share an activity with one other person. The goal is simple: to test the potential for a new relationship based on mutual attraction and compatibility.

It's the research and development phase. It sounds excitingly technical, bringing up images of lab coats, data collection and pursuit of a great idea (or at least a few explosions).

Some people excel at lifestyle multi-tasking and burn up the bandwidth flirting with a string of Internet suitors. Others take it offline and juggle an array of dinner and movie invitations from relative strangers. In their application, though, Internet R&D and its offline analogue both leave me a little cold as the means of making new acquaintances. It's a time-consuming process and in the end, I'm still sitting at my kitchen table or trading awkward small talk.

I'd rather use my spare time to have guests over for drinks and movies, or just stay home alone to watch the cats fight while I swill green tea, listen to space-rock and read Greek philosophy.

Maybe that's it: I'm just not that interested in looking for someone new. My job and my other projects take up most of my energy, and I like it that way. Even so, if I were interested in pursuing an exciting personal life, how would I do it?

If I want to meet someone, I make a point of it, but pre-arranged dates just turn me off. Instead, I go out with friends who know people I haven't gotten to know well yet, or else I go and do my reading in a public place where I can choose whether I want to talk to someone or just stay buried in my books. Maybe that sounds old-fashioned, but relationship R&D is not for me.

Amy Splitt lives and works in Blacksburg.