The world is going to shit. Nuclear Holocaust is coming. So post your best "Worst Date" story here

[cherokeeprogressive]

Hopefully the survivors will read it some day and learn from it.

Picture this: I'm a Sailor stationed in Oak Harbor, WA in the late 80s. I was what was commonly known as an "Airframer". She was a Sailor also, and worked as a "Plane Captain". We only saw each other on the flight line and that's about it. I lived off base in a house with two other guys and our house was pretty much known as party central; she lived on base in the barracks.

She was gorgeous in a Girl Next Door kind of way. Raised in a tiny town next to a two-lane road in Texas, she was as sweet as tea. I liked her from the first moment I saw her and it actually took me months to get up enough courage to talk to her. Once I did, we hit it off.

I used to be a pretty shy guy. In the context of Naval Aviation though, I was as good a wrench-turner as anybody; better than most. My advice was sought out in lots of aircraft maintenance situations. But, I digress...

It took me a couple of months to ask her for a date. She said "Finally..." and lo and behold; it was a date.

First I took her out on a boat I borrowed from a friend. Out underneath the Deception Pass bridge, past Deception Island and into the Puget Sound we went. It was a lovely day, and I packed a lunch. I cut the motor, and we just drifted between Whidbey Island and the Olympic Mountains for a few hours. Fucking awesome. We ate, had a few beers and we talked. By the time we took the boat back to the slip, I was ready to have her children.

We then went to a restaurant in Anacortes, WA called Boomers Landing. Beautiful place. Dining over the water. I had reserved a table by the windows and we watched the sun set over the Olympic Mountains together. As the room grew darker, candles were lit, and a guy starts playing guitar in the corner, alone. The ambience was so thick you could brush your teeth with it. We had a KILLER seafood dinner, and the conversation was as good as the meal.

Now for the good part: I was wearing Varnet (sp) sunglasses. I wasn't actually wearing them any longer; they were pushed up to my hairline. We were sitting at a glass table, and our dinner plates were glass. My dinner plate was protruding over the edge of the table in front of me. I had a hand in my lap. She complimented me, I looked down, and my sunglasses started to fall off of my forehead. The hand in my lap, of its own volition, snapped up to catch the sunglasses. Switch to slow motion here. On its way up, my hand hit the dinner plate on the edge of the table from underneath, and for a moment I saw my plate still half full of food, flipping away from me. Then... CRASH. CRASH BANG BOOM. Crab everywhere, even on her. A semi-dark room which was a moment ago filled with quiet conversation and sweet acoustic guitar music is now totally silent and focused on ME.

I did the only thing that came to mind... I raised both fists in the air and lowered my head. Silence. Five, ten, fifteen seconds of silence. Then, the applause started. It started at almost exactly the same time my laughing fit did. I laughed. I laughed so hard I wheezed. I laughed until tears were streaming down my face. All the while, the wait staff was bringing drinks to my table, bought by other patrons in the room. I laughed until I had to leave the table and go outside... She sat at the table. Didn't even have the good grace to get up and follow me to the door which was only five feet away.

I walked back into the restaurant a minute or two later, and the ruckus was finally dying down. I sat at our table and she lit into me like you wouldn't believe. She had never been so embarrassed in her life, and actually felt ashamed. And oh by the way, would I take her home post haste? She told me her ex-husband would have kicked the ass of everyone who clapped or laughed, and I had this picture of a hulk of a thirty-something guy in Ropers and Wranglers, jump starting his Chevy Pick'em Up after listenin' to the radio while eating at Sonic Burger, and threatening everyone who laughed with a good ass whoopin'.

Needless to say, I didn't have her kids.

I worked with her every day for two years after that and not a single personal word was ever spoken between us. How wierd is THAT?

[RandomThoughts]

1. Great Story.

Thanks for the smile.

:)


Although I doubt the world will get nuked.

[Brickbat]

2. Sounds like you got out just in time!

[Tuesday Afternoon]

3. all that crab --

:cry:

:D

she saved you some time, though.

How do you work with someone and not speak?
that is weird.

[cherokeeprogressive]

11. WOW! You mean, after all these years, my lament hasn't been for her, but for the crab?

Who knew? Thank you so much. Now that I know I was seeing it from the wrong perspective, I feel SO liberated! So liberated in fact, I think I'll go get some crab legs for dinner tonight...

So she wasn't "The One Who Got Away", the crab was. And here I've missed her all these years...

BTW, we did talk, just not on a personal level. "I need a cotter-pin to finish this job" or "This nut needs to be safety-wired" is about as far as our conversations went. Still, strange don't you think?

[Chan790]

4. The infamous Chan790 "Bacon!" story.

Author's Note: This has been posted before. I'd like to add at this time the following fact omitted previously. I absolutely hate bacon and have my entire life. The smell is terrible.

Bacon!
Originally posted by Chan790 in The DU Lounge Sun Jan 31st 2010, 10:40 AM

This is actually one of my favorite stories...it was so bad that even in the moment I was trying so hard to not laugh at her and feel a little bad about myself.

A small amount of background is required: I am a vegetarian. I do not exclusively date veg*ns, in-fact I generally prefer not to because it tends to go hand-in-hand locally with something that annoys the shit out of me: hippies and granola-freak potheads...I really hate that entire scene: potheads, Phish-fans, hemp-clothing wearing, infrequent bathers who won't wear deodorant...Hartford is infested with them. I am a hardcore foodie. I don't tolerate liars, hypocrites or people who rationalize bad-things well; I'm somewhat hypocritical in that doing exactly this was a major job-skill of mine in a past career: I made people believe things passionately that not only were not always true but occasionally irrational even. I tend to be very very direct, almost confrontationally-so, and speak my mind.

I met a woman, we'll call her Emma, through a work-function where she was contracted to provide PR services. We got to talking and the fact that we're both "PeTA people" came up; also she's a "vegan" (The quotes will be important later. Oh, so important). We both grew up on farms. The guy sitting next to her smelled like farm-sex and patchuoli. (Okay, that was even amusing.) She's militantly-feminist and that scares guys. That's cool with me. Also, she hates my boss, Karl...I think Karl is a prick. She's an avid hiker; I walk everywhere. She's cute. I'm...modest: what I lack in classic good looks I make up for in charm and cleaning-up-well. I'm pretty awestruck with her.

I ask her if she wants to join me for lunch since she hates my boss, probably doesn't want to listen to him spend the next 90 minutes taking credit for her work and the prick decided that I was not going to be invited to the luncheon for my own work-project...it's not good for the stake-holders to see the sausage-makers, I guess. So...we go to this super-fancy cafe in the park overlooking a pond and the community rose garden (Anybody who has ever lived in Hartford knows the precise place.) because I'm a signer on the organization's card and entertaining a good contractor who works cheap is within my purview...that is to say: Karl is buying lunch.

So...we sit down and the waiter comes over to take the order. I let her order first...it seemed I don't know...it seemed like a good idea for no good reason at all. She orders a BLT, mustard, no mayo. I stare silently over the top of my menu. I have a stunned pause. I order some sort of creamy vegetable soup, I think (was it the Squash Bisque? I think it was)...I don't even remember. The waiter walks away and I say "you know that there is bacon on that, right?"

"Bacon is a vegetable."

"Um...no, it's not."

"Bacon is my favorite vegetable."

"What part of the bacon plant does bacon come from then?"

Suddenly, we are having a very loud argument in the restaurant about men's (my) need to oppress women (her). It's her body and she'll put into it whatever she'd like. (Mind you, I might be able truly care less what she eats...I have an issue with her co-opting labels she's not entitled to. Labels I aspire to and fall short of constantly.) I'm not trying to have a personal autonomy argument with Emma...I was trying to preface a make-out sesh behind the pond house perhaps. I decide to leave, pay the bill on the way out the door, leave an additional $40 in case she wants anything else...and left her to enjoy her sandwich in peace and walk back to work.

About halfway there, I realize that this is nearly karmic...two individuals who work in the area of public manipulation getting in an argument about (to borrow a word from Stephen Colbert) truthiness and honesty. Sat down at my desk, composed my letter of resignation. Printed it. Signed it. Wrote an email to Emma (which she never responded to) and left. Never looked back.

To this day, among my friends and I, the proper response to any statement where the stator is simply trying to avoid an uncomfortable truth which would force them to re-examine their actions or thinking is "Bacon is a vegetable." (Though...it's really really not.)

[struggle4progress]

8. It's my impression that successful relationships often require people to be have the maturity

to tell themselves stuff like Well, I could be wrong: bacon really might be a vegetable :shrug:

[Chan790]

9. Truly.

Everybody knows that bacon grows on piggy trees. I don't know why I was so misled about that. I'll be back, I've decided to go in search of a "center-cut ribeye" shrub and some pastrami greens.

[struggle4progress]

10. Hmmm. I guess I didn't really explain the concept clearly. Well, no matter: it was a minor point,

based on my empirical observations of various successful couples

[xchrom]

5. i can only say awesome and really really well told

glad you didn't get hitched up to her.

[Chan790]

6. Her loss...

that's a great date story. IF she'd have cracked-up and laughed with them, she sounds like a keeper.

[Tom_Foolery]

7. She was as sweet as tea...

That is a great description. I can hear that in a country song.

[gratuitous]

12. Mine isn't nearly that involved

But it does involve a young woman for whom I had the warm fuzzies. She was a year ahead of me in college, and just meant for me (or so I thought). I confided in my oldest friend (who I'd known since I was 5), who also attended the college, and he said that he could see us getting together, which really made me feel good. Early on in my sophomore year, I bought concert tickets for a singer I knew she'd like, and sold a few of the tickets to friends, including the aforementioned oldest friend.

The night of the concert, Young Miss and I sat together for a grand total of about 30 seconds, during which time she made no intelligible sounds and sat bolt upright, as stiff as an ironing board. The rest of the evening? Yeah, she sat with Old Friend, chatting and laughing and having the best time as he amped the charm up to about 11.

You probably know the rest: They got happily married for about two years, and divorced after four. I never saw either of them again, except the one time when I dropped by for a visit post-college. They had both become rabid conservatives of the "Goldwater is a Commie" stripe. The last I heard of her was 25 years ago, she had taken up with the accounting professor. I rank it as the Biggest Mistake I Never Made, except for the money I blew on the concert tickets.

[Redstone]

13. Worst date? For me: May 10, 1972.

Redstone

[nolabear]

14. Sounds like you were blessed early. Didn't have to waste a lot of time on her.

Now, if she had had the good sense to get up and do the touchdown dance with you or requested "Hit Me Baby One More Time" or some equivalent from the band, the two of you could have drunk all night w/o spending a dime, you could have turned it into an award-winning screenplay and you'd be kicking back telling the big, happy brood of grandkids all about it. But no.

In the aforementioned screenplay she'd be the beyotch you left for the cool woman.

[Xipe Totec]

15. Pity Date With a Blond Goddess

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=105&topic_id=2179871&mesg_id=2180183

[cherokeeprogressive]

16. That there's a sad tale, pardner. Goes to show though, beauty IS only skin deep.

Makes a man wanna cry.

[charlie and algernon]

17. Girl showed up 90 minutes late

it was our third date. We met on eharmony and had gone on two dates already and both went great, so we planned on meeting at this jazz club in DC for a third date. There were two performances that night and because we didn't know when she'd be able to get off work, we planned to go to the late performance. That afternoon, she calls me up, says that it would be too late to go to the second performance and asks if we can meet for the first one, a couple hours earlier, fine, no problem. I'm there 20 minutes early, as I usually am for things, I never ask the same for dates, I know I get to things way to early.

So it gets to be time for the first performance and she's a no show. She does call to say she was running a little late, but is on the metro and will be there in 15 minutes. 15 minutes later she texts to say she's now just GETTING to the metro and will be there in 20 minutes. :wtf: At this point, I probably would've left but I had the tickets and I did want to see the band, so I (perhaps foolishly) stuck around. A full HOUR later, she FINALLY shows up, just in time for the second performance, lol!

She apologizes, but never explains the time discrepancy, and I don't really press it, just glad that she showed up at all. We go inside and find out they've stopped serving food. She then asks if she can leave, by herself, and go get food at another restaurant, lol. I'm hungry too, so I go too, we stop at a chinese place, get something quick, and run back to the jazz club. While were waiting for the performance to start, she's quiet and the chemistry we had in the first two dates is now long gone. She then informs me she can't make our already planned trip to the state rennfaire. At that point, the concert was just awkward and we quickly made it too the metro station and went on our merry, separate ways.

Amazingly, three weeks later, she leaves a voice mail apologizing for not saying anything since the jazz club and asking if I wanted to see her again. I never called her back.