Dating Stories From the Past: Opera Girl

I thought it might be a good day for a little humor here - I know that not everyone likes the heavier stuff.

The great thing about getting married at age 34 is that I had plenty of years to collect some good dating stories. And some of them I can even share with my wife (kidding, only kidding). I couldn't think of anything funny to write today so I thought I'd go way back and pull up one of these stories. I swear that it is all true.

As you may know, I moved to Connecticut in 1997 to work for IBM. I knew absolutely no one when I moved out there. Most of my co-workers had families of their own or lived quite a distance away so there wasn't opportunity for social interaction. After about a year of this I decided to look to online dating for some help. One of these days I'll write a longer article (or book) about that.

So this one girl replies to my add. On the surface we seemed like a good fit - she was also from Western New York and she liked men. I think we talked on the phone once or twice and then made arrangements to go out on a date the next week.

So I picked her up at her place and we proceeded to head out to dinner. Things seemed ok at first - there was just the normal safe conversation that you have while you're trying to get to know someone. So we get to the restaurant and we sit down. I order a pint and she orders a strawberry daiquiri. A minute later the waiter comes back and puts our drinks down in front of us - the beer in front of me, the daiquiri in front of her.

Without warning or hesitation, she leans over the table, picks up my beer and drinks it in one shot. Yes, the whole thing.

It took me a minute to process this event. I think at that point I was actually fairly impressed that someone was comfortable enough to be themself in that environment. On the down side, I was beerless and that never sits well with me.

(and I'll save you the time of posting this comment: no, I wasn't anticipating what skills this even might have predicted)

Unfortunately that was the last bit of silence for the entire night. This girl proceeded to tell me her life's story in what seemed like real-time. She was prom queen and starred in all of these musicals and was in some prestigious school studying opera. Nothing was left out. There was no conversation or anything like that.

The one thing you realize with online dating is that you always need a plan. My plan was to go to dinner and then if things went well we'd go for a walk somewhere. As dinner finished I realized that I had heard enough stories and that it was time to take this girl home. She did slow down a bit on the ride back to her place. When we got to her place she asked if I wanted to come in to see some cool pics that you she had with various celebrities. I paused for a moment and then said sure, why not.

I know what you're thinking and you're wrong. When I was a kid we had a cat that hated the neighbor's dog. We went on vacation for two weeks one summer and the same neighbors were watching our cat. When we came back, the cat and the dog were best friends. My point is that desperate times call for desperate measures and I decided to give her a little more time to make an impression because I was bored silly.

Big mistake.

We spent the next two hours looking at pictures of all of the stories that I had just spent the last two hours pretending I didn't hear. And for those of you that know me, I hate looking at pictures. Yours, mine, Aunt Sally's - it doesn't matter. Finally at around 11 I said that I had to do laundry or kill myself or something like that and I got out of there. She made me swear that I would call her the next day and I said sure.

So did I call her? Sigh... once again, I had nothing else going on. The next day I did call her and I got her machine. No biggie, I was going out of town for business anyway. So I'm sitting in a hotel room a few days later and I had nothing else to do so I called again. Once again, the machine. I figured that I had fulfilled my promise.

I get home a couple of days later and there is an email from her. It was short and to the point:

I needed to stop stalking her.

No, I kid you not.

I wrote her an email back and I was polite. I reminded her that she made me promise to call her and that I called a second time in the event that she didn't get the first message (she had roommates).

She wrote back and said that she was praying for my soul because I was desperate.

It was at this point that I replied with one of my better pieces of creative writing. I wish that I had it somewhere but I can't imagine where that would be. If I remember correctly it had something to do with the fact that I couldn't know if I was desperate because I didn't get a word in edge-wise. I still took the high road but I did get in some funny lines. Anyway, that was that.

It was just odd to be put in that situation. I was only there because I was bored out of my skull. Even so, I was about done with her anyway. But to have this happen? That's like being told that you weren't chosen for a job before you could tell them that you didn't want it anyway. The odd part is that when you do hear it you suddenly start to re-think why you didn't want it in the first place. This is just another example of how we want to be liked and we tend to have a little extra desire for those that do not want us.

Stay tuned for "fun dating stories, Volume II".