And the woman prayed, 'LORD, keep me single!'
I had a bad date Friday. A very, very WEIRD date Friday night. I don't know that I'll ever share the details, but it was three hours of wanting to hit this guy with my teacup, but being so fascinated that someone could be so off the wall that I couldn't NOT listen ...
My prayer, as a much younger woman, used to be that God would send Prince Charming ASAP.
My prayer now as an older (wiser, I hope) woman is that God will keep me blissfully single if crazy, cultish men are my alternative.
Side note (for the fellas): You can gauge the success of a first date pretty easily, and pretty early, simply by noticing what and how much your date has ordered and is eating.
I walked into the restaurant thinking that a full meal was OK. I was kind of hungry.
I met my "date" and decided that a smaller meal might be OK.
He started talking (he did ALL the talking. For three hours ...), and I flipped to the salad portion of the menu.
He started telling me about how he doesn't eat bacon, sausage or ANY kind of pork (or shellfish, for that matter), because it's unclean, and he believes in keeping ALL of God's laws (and then went off on a rant about Peter's visions of unclean food in the New Testament. And this was as mild as he got ...). I contemplated a side salad and another side dish.
He kept talking, and by the time the waiter took our orders, I simply asked for toast. Had it been possible to ask for one piece instead of two, I would have done it. I was not going to owe this guy anything more than a cup of tea and a couple pieces of toast.
So for three hours, I drank cup after cup after cup of Lemon Zinger tea, piled the used bags on my empty toast plate, and tried (oh, I TRIED) to keep a straight face, to keep from walking away mid-sentence, to keep from throwing something at him ...
I will say this: If I ever suddenly and inexplicably disappear, call the FBI. Please. And call my parents.
7 comments:
I'm going to have to assume this was a Blind Date; You would have known this was a bad idea if you had talked with him for five minutes before agreeing to a date :-).
Second, here's Fuzzy's advice on blind dates. REFUSE. ALWAYS. I know that your friends have the best of intentions, and that he or she knows the other party very well, but you've never met them, and even my closest friends I don't count on to set me up in a potential relationship.
We think our friends know us better then our family, and often that's right. But our friends, often in a healthy relationship of their own, feel a certain pity for us, or think that we might be too lonely, and don't like to see their freinds in that situation. Maybe they have an almost guilty feeling about having the One They Love in front of them, while your at home Saturday nights with a Pint of Ice Cream (mmm... not a bad way to spend a Saturday, now that I think about it! :-) ).
So they often propose a date with a person that normally wouldn't cut the mustard, but is overlooked along with any negative personality traits or red-flags in order to provide to you the noble service of MatchMaker.
More often then not, this turns out to be somewhere in the range of non-productive, or outright nightmarish.
If, however, you did know this person before agreeing to the date, all I can tell you is that some people are very good at hiding their crazy. Be ever vigilant!
[follow up post soon, w/ 50% more funny!]
Fuzzy, sir:
*sigh* It was the next worst thing to a blind date: I met this guy online. Previous rantings on this blog recount the good, the bad, the ugly and the psychotic encountered via attempts at Web-coordinated romance. In my defense, during our correspondence before this meeting, the "crazy" was kept out of "sight." I don't know what the lesson learned is ... except that it made me want to go home and read the Bible, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Cheers.
Oh goodness Sarah.. I'm sorry it was horrible--he didn't question the fact that you only ordered toast??
Maybe he read "A year of living Biblically"...but if he did, he'd realize that keeping all of God's laws is impossible..sheesh.
Yes.. better to be single than married to a crazie..
Miss you.
"A Year of Living Biblically" is hilarious! Well worth the read....I'm kind of glad you went of that really bad date. The stories you accumlated over those three hours have been amusing me for two days now!
Hol: I wish a single book could sum up this man's weirdness. It began with the pork/shellfish thing (and the potatoes ... I really need to call you); it then went through his very strange takes on the Bible (for instance: that God spoke an entire race of humans into existence before He created Adam; that the Flood only cover some obscure valley north of India; that Jesus spent His adolescence in Wales; that the Salem Witch Trials were a fantastic idea; that any kind of interracial relationship is "adulterous;" that EVERYTHING that's going on in America is part of the Communist conspiracy to take over the country; that I should ditch my 401(k) and invest in ammunition [and apparently live on the "ranch" with him and his crazy pastor]; that white, Anglo-Saxon Europeans [and, by extension, Colonial Americans and their descendants] are direct descendants of Jacob and are blessed by God to be more intelligent and able to tackle intellectually challenging things; and that the Book of Jasher [which I've only found in the LDS section of a local bookstore] should have been part of the Bible ... and his 'ministry' publishes and distributes it). A year of living according to the Bible, I can handle; a completely derranged take on everything ... not so much. I guess I just summed up the details, too ... huh.
Just... Wow.
But he... uh... wow.
Sometimes, the best part of the whole experience is that you know they're out there, and you know what some of the warning signs are.
Oy.
I agree with Fuzzy.. uh..wow.
You would think he would reveal his weirdness in stages--not all at once on the first date..
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