In my day, I went on my own share of bad dates. Here’s one from Love through the Eyes of an Idiot.
It all started after I developed a crush on this girl, a little young for me, but her mother liked me and trusted me. We sat and talked sometimes. She was small, cute, with dark hair framing a small, pale face dotted with freckles. She had her problems, including an absentee father, as I recall, but mostly she was normal, though sometimes sad.
Once, she was being chased by a group of guys in the church building where we both attended services. Whether they were teasing her or assaulting her I wasn’t sure, but she definitely didn’t want to be chased, and she seemed frantic to get away from them. Her little brother was with her, and I secreted them in one of the Sunday School rooms and locked the door.
The idea was to pretend that the room was empty. But she was in a panic, afraid of being caught. I gently said, “Now, settle down,†and immediately she stopped her anxious rambling and began to stare into my eyes. She was standing with her back against one of the walls, while I stood over her, my hand braced against the wall above her shoulder. We held our breath. All was silent. I experienced one of those charged moments, in which we felt so close. I wasn’t sure whether I should kiss her. I wanted to, to kiss her and hold her. And I probably would have, if it weren’t for her little brother standing in the room with us.
We did date, one time. I asked her what she wanted to do, and she said she wanted to go rollerskating. Okay. It didn’t matter to me that I sucked on roller skates—still do. But what was I thinking? (Answer: I wasn’t.) After making a sufficient fool of myself, and losing her to the crowd of real skaters, I asked her if she’d like to get a bite to eat, something I was much more adept at. But she had apparently met someone else at the rollerskating rink and wanted to spend some time with him. I was livid, demanded we leave immediately, drove her home, angrily. As I recall, she claimed we had not been on a date—and maybe she really did believe that—but I wasn’t going to hear it. We didn’t talk anymore after that.
What was your worst dating experience?