I had the worst first date ever. But, in order to understand why this date was so bad, we are going to need to take a quick journey through my youth. On this trip we will inventory the manifold fears and insecurities that embedded themselves in my mind much like a tick can burrow into a child’s leg while he wanders alone through the high grasses of a horse farm instead of playing wiffle ball with friends at the church picnic.
My uncle Jim has never married. He lives with his father now. As an adult I realize that Jim is clinically introverted, and probably belongs on the autistic spectrum somewhere. But as a kid all I knew was that he had been a marine and had completed an Iron Man competition. (I didn’t know what an Iron Man was, but I was sure it had something to do with the comic book hero.) Jim was the oldest kid in his family. I was the oldest kid in mine. Children don’t understand that correlation does not imply causation. And so, I developed a phobia that I would never marry. This was when I was circa eight years old.
I was homeschooled back in the eighties before alternative methods of schooling were cool. No one had heard of Montessori, un-schooling, or classical education. Homeschooling was not favored by the affluent as a way to prepare their kids to be the creative thinkers of the future. My being homeschooled sounded like a shot from the Moral Majority across the bow of culture into the depraved and unredeemable institution of public schooling. Again, this isn’t what was really happening. It is how I saw my situation based on the feedback I got from my friend Ian Griffin and his dad, “Junior”. Junior incidentally always told Ian not to do any snake-handling at my house. A reference that was lost on me until freshman year of college. It was at my friend Ian’s house that I was exposed to the essential pop culture I was missing at home: Nirvana, The Simpsons, Seinfeld, and Doom. The point of all this is that I developed a paranoia that I was out of touch with what was going on in the “real” world.
In the seventh grade I met my best friend, Al Cedeno. We spent our middle school years doing typical middle school activities (bowling, watching movies, hanging out at a local Greek diner called Spring Gardens) with and without girls. We both had a healthy interest in the co-eds, but the return affection was not equal. If you are searching for an analogy pretend that you are Steve Buscemi hanging out with Antonio Banderas all the time.
This was also the heyday of Joshua Harris’ book “I Kissed Dating Goodbye.” But let me tell you, it is hard to say you kissed anything goodbye if that thing wasn’t really interested in kissing in the first place.
In the fall of 1999, Al went to the local high school and I enrolled as a freshman in college. While being labeled a “child prodigy” is nice for the ego, no one has ever been popular with the chicks after being deigned a “child” anything. Al fell in love about nine hundred times during those four years. I mainly read a lot and tried not to think about it.
I was eighteen years old when I graduated from college. I began to realize that although I had graduated cum laude, perhaps I had squandered my best opportunity at finding a soul mate. Where in the world was I going to find a good Christian wife if not at a Christian college? So I decided to keep my job at the school library after graduation for the unabashed intent of meeting women. (It’s really less creepy than it sounds.) I planned for it to be a train wreck initially as I had no experience in the art of courting women. It would be lots of first dates, I thought, until something clicked. So it was better to get started soon and not waste any time.
But, where to start? There was a girl who worked in the library who was very quiet, very pretty, and very out of my league. Did I mention I weighed about 95.7 pounds, had the complexion of a deep-water clam, and geeked out regularly about the Academy Awards? Also, what about that whole rule about not dating people at work? If this was going to be my base of operations for a while I could be making things awkward fast. And all of this was besides the point. Because I knew in my heart of hearts she would never, not ever, not even maybe, say yes.
“But why not at least ask?” I thought. The worst she could say was no. I spent the next week “girding up my loins” to use a Biblical term. Emotionally I swung between the despair of knowing it was never going to happen and being absolutely certain we’d get married. (Again, this isn’t as creepy as it sounds.) Until one morning when I couldn’t take it any more, I just walked up to her and asked:
“Would you maybe, um, want to hang out on Friday night or something?”
I had my gracious “don’t worry, that’s fine, it isn’t a big deal” speech planned along with the most direct route to the bathroom so I could cry it out for a while. What I didn’t have, and what I needed, was a plan for what we would do if she said yes.
“Yes”
My mind went blank for a moment and I told her we could shoot for 6 and I’d get back to her with the details. Then I ran ran away.
I didn’t want to do something dumb like dinner and a movie, so I decided we could take a train downtown to Chicago and walk up Michigan Ave. Maybe we could grab a coffee or something, whatever.
It didn’t hit me until about 30 minutes before I picked her up in my parents’ twelve person conversion van, that I had never actually heard this girl say more than five words. I had planned a date that involved at least two and a half hours of travel via train and a bare minimum hour and a half of walking in Chicago. And if she wasn’t going to talk I was 100% screwed. What did I have to talk about for five hours? (See the note above about being pop culture illiterate) I had already given her my speech on the 2002 Oscars. What else was there to talk about? I should have gotten a book on ice breaker questions or something! I’m terrible at chit-chat.
But as we got settled on the train, the conversation was fantastic. We were really connecting, actually. So I replaced one paranoia with another: I had to pee desperately, but I convinced myself that if I left the magic would be gone. The conversation would die. Plus, using the bathroom on the train is a horrible experience. So I waited ninety minutes until we reached Union Station in Chicago.
What I didn’t know is that Union Station, and the entire Chicago Loop for that matter, is a complete ghost town after rush hour. So, I deferred my trip to the bathroom until we could find some shop with nice lighting and fewer heroine addicts laying on the floor covered in newspapers. As we walked, the urge seemed to increase exponentially step by step. I began to realize that I had pushed myself too far. I was in a desperate situation, one that I had not been in since standing in line to see the Teen Age Mutant Ninja Turtles at Disney World circa ’94. My mind slid from the all important conversation to frantically searching for any open restaurant, coffee shop, anything.
I should also tell you that I refused to tell my date of the urge. Instead I tried to suggest that we grab a bite to eat or a drink and she demurred saying she was fine. If there is an anxiety spectrum that has a range starting with George Clooney at “ice water cool” I was rocketing towards Michael Moore insane.
We finally reached Water Tower Place where I knew there was a bathroom. At this point I was debating the possibility of sprinting up the escalator to the seventh floor Men’s bathroom. The urge was destroying rationality as well as conversation skills. Somewhere deep inside my panic I heard myself asking my date what her favorite movie was for the third time. The wave of relief as we reached the seventh floor turned toxic as I realized that this bathroom was closed and we would need to return to the second floor food court bathrooms (a detail I had tragically missed as I frantically reviewed the mall map upon entry).
I apologize now to my more polite readers, but I need you to understand the depths of depravity to which the urge had taken me. As we boarded the descending escalator I reached my hand into my pocket and pinched the offending organ. It was a desperate attempt to buy more time. But my credit had run out. It was only by the grace of God that I had turned the corner into the Men’s room before the levies broke so my date couldn’t see the shame that washed over me.
In the empty mall bathroom I surveyed the damage. It wasn’t salvageable. I considered the possibility of removing my shirt and tying it around my waist like I did with my wind breaker at Disney Land waiting for the TMNT. But I didn’t have an undershirt on. I tried to think of other possible scenarios. Were there any clothing stores that would deliver clothes to you? Would they deliver to the mall bathroom? No, I conceded. That probably didn’t exist. I thought of Ben Stiller and his unfortunate encounter with a zipper in the cult film There’s Something About Mary. Surely this wasn’t so far removed? Before conceding defeat and leaving the stall to admit to my date what had happened and to begin what would surely be the longest train ride from Chicago to Elgin in the history of the world, I thought, “I will either marry this girl or never talk to her again.” But on my way out of the bathroom I made a discovery like Abraham finding a ram in the thicket, the hand dryers of the Water Tower Place bathrooms were waste high! I lathered up some hand-soap and water, washed the effected areas of my pants and then leaned my self into the hand dryers. It wasn’t a fast process. And I had to ignore the stares of men entering and leaving the bathroom during those ten minutes. But when it was over my pants were dry.
Victorious, I walked out of the bathroom and grabbed that girl’s hand in mine. And, dear readers, I want you to know, I’ve been holding it ever since.
The End
Like this:
One blogger likes this.
7 Comments
Leave a Reply
Hola, hermano!
Guilty Conscience
Welcome to The Guilty Conscience. We are trying to write about faith in a way that is "kickable" and thoughtful without being cliched or trite. Sometimes we succeed.
We've tried to make it easy to find things. Check out our top posts and then take a minute and browse the categories below.
If you like what you read sign up for e-mails or follow us on Facebook or Twitter.
Thanks for visting
Follow
Best. Story. Ever. (And almost as good as Al’s telling).
Blasphemy!
This is hilarious I was laughing for like 20 minutes hahahaha
Simply hilarious. …..
That’s a GREAT story. Things I resonated with: 1. having an older adult relative who never married (mine is an aunt who’s been a missionary in Costa Rica since she was 28 or something) and fearing it was contagious, 2. the setting, 3. the lack of pop culture savvy growing up. I wish my dating experience had been as . . . cut and “dried” as that . . . although then I wouldn’t be married to the guy I did marry, last year, so . . . it all worked out. No pants peeing, but a heck of a lot of other drama in the meantime, though.
I love how you say you were pop culture illiterate and then all your analogies are pop culture references.
That was so great, Lane! Steve Buscemi and Antonio Banderas! Oh man. You really were screwed! And the complexion of a deep-water clam! Excellent analogies. But you really did get the beautiful woman.
[...] by my mother, Jill Severson and edited by me. This past Saturday I read Lane’s blog about his first date with my daughter-in-law. I’ve heard the story before, once as a wedding toast from his best [...]