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What Was The Worst Date of Your Life?
It was the summer before my sophomore year in college. I had just gotten my own studio apartment, even though I lived in the same city as my parents (dorms weren’t for me). We were members of the Raleigh Country Club (but not the 1%!), and the house I grew up in was situated on the golf course. Needless to say, I spent many summers at the pool, and this summer was no exception. One day, I went to the pool, and things happened.
Her name was Susan. I first saw her stretched out poolside, the suntan lotion on her long, lean body reeking of coconut oil (must have been that Hawaiian Tropic stuff). She was tall, had curly auburn hair, and sent my hormones into overdrive.
I approached her, struck up a conversation, and learned she was a new club member, 18 years old, and a senior in high school. “Yes!” I thought to myself. What high school chick doesn’t want to brag she has a boyfriend who goes to college?
I asked her out and she said yes. My best laid plans (soon to come to ruin – that’s called “foreshadowing”) was to take her to a movie, then retire to my apartment for – ahem – an intellectual discussion on wave-particle duality (hey, I was a physics major!). I picked her up, went to the theater just up the street from my place (aren’t I clever?), and bought tickets for some movie with a title I didn’t recognize. The theater was surprisingly empty and we soon learned why.
The movie was awful. Nothing in the first five minutes made any sense, and the first big scene involved a woman being sexually assaulted. Oh great, I thought, not what I wanted on my date’s mind.
“Let’s leave and go to your place,” she said. “This movie is awful.” I was glad she agreed with me, and also pleased that she acknowledged my apartment was our next destination.
I figured I could recover from the bad movie by at least being sympathetic and hospitable. We got to my place, I gave her a beer (drinking age was 18 back then), and showed her around. Being a studio apartment, it only took two minutes. Once done with the tour, we sat on the bed, I kissed her, and she kissed me back. Things are going great, I thought, but then she sat bolt upright. That’s when the nightmare began.
Without saying a word, she got up and went to the bathroom. A minute later, she came out, a concerned look on her face.
“I started,” she said.
“Started what?” I said.
“Started it!” she replied.
“What do you mean by ‘it’?” I asked politely.
She then unleashed a stream of expletives that ended with the word “period.” (Not unlike “If you like your current health care plan, you can keep it. Period.”)
I guess the dumb look on my face told her she needed to explain more, so she told me we had to go to the nearest store and buy . . . a feminine hygiene product. That’s when I started to scream inside.
We got into my car, and we drove to the convenience store up the street. She gave me instructions, but my brain had already shut down. I had never bought this stuff before, so what the heck was I to do? I walked up and down the aisles, then I finally found the right place. I remembered she was tall (5′ 11″, just as tall as my first wife – but that’s another story), so I figured that the box marked “Super” was what she needed. I went to the checkout, saw my date in my car, and held the box up so she could acknowledge with a nod that I bought the right thing. Instead, she sank in her seat, covering her face with her hands. Ignoring the smirk from the guy behind the counter, I bought the box, took Susan back to my place, and she disappeared into the bathroom. When she emerged, she said “Take me home.” I did. No words were exchanged on the ride back.
The next day, I went to the pool, and she was there. I approached her, ready to offer an apology for how bad the evening went. She looked at me, shook her head, and that was all I needed to know. We never spoke again.
For the record, my wife (Neutral Observer) and I have swapped “worst date” stories.
Okay, Ricochetti, let’s hear what you have to say. Remember: No guts, no glory!
Published in General
Fun stories here, makes me kinda glad my dating life was limited to 1 serious girl before my wife.
There was nothing that qualifies as a disaster, save the evening when that first girl broke my heart. Was only in retrospect that I realized I was being used as a rebound cushion by her.
I was going for “screwball comedy from Hell” but “grim farce” works too.
I’m not even under my own name, but I sure am glad I didn’t post before it was promoted. I have a great story, but just no.
Threads like these that make me so grateful to have all that stuff more than half a lifetime ago.
When I took her to a movie and she said, out loud, and proudly, “God, I can’t believe you brought me to the suburbs,” as if I’d taken her to the dump to shoot at rats or something.
And that latter scenario would be a bad date how?
I asked a girl I worked with for a first date to a concert a couple weeks away. She accepted, and the day before the show she called and said she knew some other people who had tickets, she would like them to join us, and so they all would come by and pick me up.
When they arrived, she was in the front seat and some guy I didn’t know was driving. I sat in back with some of her friends. It wasn’t long before it became obvious that she was there with the driver.
Yes, she had brought a date on our date.
She never mentioned it, before or during. Just brought him along as if it was the obvious thing to do.
I was humiliated, but also pretty happy that I hadn’t gotten attached to this so and so in any way. A few months later, she was ‘expecting’ and he was long gone. It was worth a day of humiliation to not get involved with the likes of that.
When I took Daphne Bigelow to the Orpheum.
By all means! Do tell.
By any chance was the move “A Clockwork Orange?” My worst date was a double feature of that fine, romantic flick and “Deliverance.”
Ended well, though. She married me anyway.
Moonlight, reflected off of a relatively calm Lake Michigan, gleamed in her brown eyes like the Aquarids that connected us.
Late summer heat, captive of the untouched sand dune, radiated from her bronze skin.
Air, thick with August humidity, embraced our practiced embrace in pressure and sheen.
Expectation, like the waves overstepping the shore, rolled over her brilliant face.
True horizon, invisible on the other side of the great lake, was there in my mind.
Silence, left in the wake of the retreating Summer Triangle before Orion’s bow, imposed clarity.
This meteor had run it’s course across the Summer sky.
As good as it was – as great as it was – it could never survive the inevitable Perseids.
It wasn’t a bad date from my perspective, but I saw how it affected her. Unfortunately there was only one driver going in our direction, and we were forced to share the long ride home in the backseat of the same car. That got a little awkward.
I don’t know if this would make you feel better, but . . .
The only Jewish girl I ever dated was awesome! Differing religions were never a problem with us. The only reason we stopped seeing each other was because she took me to a party to meet her fellow law school students – all of whom smoked pot. I was in the Navy, so there was no way we could stay together and hang out with her friends. She smoked pot, I never did drugs. End of potential long-term relationship.
As an aside, in college, I always had to warn my dates I was a physics major . . .
Warn them? That’s not a bug, it’s a feature.
My best friends from college are physics majors. Crazy bunch of bohemian nerds.
Nerds are the best. My boyfriend in college was an interesting dichotomy; a defensive linebacker on an academic scholarship majoring in electrical engineering. His sister (and a sorority sister of mine) and his wonderful family are still in contact. :)
How about a date that went bad and then ended up as the best ever?
Girl and I had been dating for a few months, and had a date scheduled for an evening. But, a spring on my mother’s garage door broke during the day, so I would have to fix that after I finished work. Girl said she still wanted to accompany me on that task. So instead of grilled shrimp at a favorite informal restaurant, followed by a walk on the beach, she got whatever food my mother had on hand, followed by hanging on a garage door to relieve spring tension while I attached the new springs. Not exactly a girl’s dream date!
But, her willingness to be together doing “normal” everyday tasks got me thinking that she might be good for the longer term. And, here we are, 35 years later, still doing together normal everyday tasks together as husband and wife.
A pot smoker would have ended a relationship me as well. I was in high school in the ’50s and the kids who did drugs/pot were a mess. I swore I’d never do drugs. I think I would have enjoy a physics major, as long as his interest didn’t include how fast he could get my panties off. I was really a shrinking violet, and not because I didn’t want someone’s arm around me but because I had been warned over and over again to “never let a boy touch you.” I was so ignorant, I didn’t know what that meant. Years later, I had a younger sister cry hysterically in my arms because a boy touched her shoulder as he passed her in a football stadium.