Back in high school I was dating this girl who lived in one of the nicer “Hills” suffixed suburbs of Chicago. One particularly stormy night, I drive up to her house which is located on the top of a small hill that leads into a culdesac. I dash out of the car, both excited to see her and trying to quickly get clear of the downpour. I ring the doorbell. I tap my foot. I look around. I ring the doorbell again.
Wait a second, I think. Something’s wrong. I look back around. My car’s disappeared. I glance up the street, I glance down the street. I don’t see it. There’s no way someone could have or would have stolen a baby blue 1985 Chevette in this neighborhood, in that span of time. What the fuck? The front door opens, and my girlfriend, her father, and her mother are standing there, staring at a wet, confused and barely coherent me. I gesture wildly to the right, to the left, “Where’s my car? It was here a second ago.” I look back up the street, no sign of it. Back down the hill into the culdesac. Wait a second…there it is!
My Chevette managed to roll down into a neighbor’s front yard. A little to the left and a mailbox would have been mown down. A steeper incline and the car would’ve been in someone’s living room. Turns out in my excitement, I had left the car in drive when I turned it off, and the Chevette didn’t have a locking mechanism that would prevent you from removing the key in a case like this.
Thank God this wasn’t a first date, and her good parents were gracious enough not to give me shit about it (I know I sure as hell would if I were the father. :))
My own worst date went like this - I was hanging out in a bar and struck up a conversation with a guy. We exchange phone numbers, play phone tag a few times and finally arrange a dinner date.
Dinner goes fine. Afterward, we head over to a lounge bar called ‘G’ in Chelsea for a drink, which when we get there is pretty crowded. As we’re sitting there, talking, my date was literally in the middle of a sentence when he suddenly freezes:
My date: “So, anyway I said -” (strange pause, his eyes glaze over) “I’ll be back in just a minute.”
Then he bolts out of his seat and heads off into the crowd. A few minutes later, he returns and is obviously very distracted.
My date: “I just saw a guy I’ve been trying to score with for a YEAR.” (long pause) “Uh, what was your name again? Jim? John?”
I told him my name, at the moment just too stunned to be mad yet.
My date: “Oh I have to go after this guy. I’ll see you later. Call me!” And then he rushes off.
I was too thrown to do anything but leave. I think the thing that rankles me most what that he seemed sincere when he said ‘call me’, as if I would still be interested in him after that.
When I was 20, I had just begun to date a woman that I was madly in love with. As I was driving to her parents’ home to meet them for the first time, I noticed the sickly sweet smell of antifreeze. I turned on the heater to try to cool the radiator a bit and drove like a bat out of hell to make it to her house before my radiator boiled over. I figured I’d top off the radiator when I got ready to leave.
The problem turned out to be that my heater core had rusted out. This meant that as I turned onto her block, steam (not hot, just warm moist air) started to pour from underneath my dash board. As I pulled into her drive way, with her entire family out front to greet me, picture great waves of clouds billowing out of the driver’s side window while I lean out, trying to see enough to keep from running into someone or something.
Parent’s memories aren’t as short as all that … we certainly remember driving the clunkers when we were just starting out and don’t hold it against you at all. If you were in a $40K car at that age I’d actually wonder if you were living beyond your means and perhaps not a good match for any of the AdoptaDaughters.
Hah, not so bad. When I worked at the theatre, a good fraction of the people said that. It’s only natural, and I usually just smiled and said “thanks.”
I never say “How are you,” “How’s it going,” etc. At least once a week I’ll say “hello” to a store clerk only to get an answer of “Pretty good, you?” or “Not bad, yourself?”
Damn, that sounds like something that the Jack character on Will & Grace would do!!! He cracks me up, but he’s SOOOOOOOOOOOO amazingly un-empathetic and selfish, I guess you can only laugh, because if you didn’t…???..you’d cry???
