Share the Tale of the Worst Date Ever

[Torm]

Boy, Queen Dopplepopolis asks some good ones, no?

My worst date requires a bit of set up to understand, because out of context it sounds only mediocre:

I used to live in Missouri when I was a freshman in high school, and I was completely in love with a girl there, Jessica (not her real name). When my mom and dad split, I came to South Carolina with my mom, but before I did, I proposed to Jessica, and she was supposed to be making arrangements and was going to come live with us. (My mom and her mom had been talking - her mom was willing to let her go, because she was married to Jessica's abusive step-father, and things were getting bad.) I knew Jessica was mostly agreeing to this to get away, but I was in love, and fine with that.

The one week that I had thought I'd be waiting turned into a month, then turned into that she had found out she could move in with her sister, nearby, instead, and that "it would really be better if we waited until we were both out of school to get married." Okay, I was upset, but it was logical, so I could accept that. First opportunity I got, though, which was the beginning of the next summer after my sophomore year, I went up to spend a week with her.

Well, school still wasn't out for her (bad planning and overeagerness on my part), and she had an evening job working at Dairy Hut (not their real name ). So I was there staying at a hotel room alone (things weren't good between dad and I at this point) for about three days before she was able to actually come around. (I saw a LOT of movies - pretty much everything that came out that summer.)

The date: She came and picked me up from the hotel, and we went to the mall to kick around a little bit while waiting to see "City Slickers" starring William Quartz (not his real name ). We sat in the food court and talked about everything but us. Went and saw the movie. Then, she "had to be home early", so we skipped dinner and she took me back to the hotel, and left me with promises that, if nothing else, she'd see me off at the airport, but everything was keeping her very busy.

Another day passed, and I got a phone call from Lisa (not her real name, either), a mutual friend - Jessica had told her I was in town, and she wanted to come hang out for a little bit, and eat with me. She had some things to talk to me about....

I knew there was bad news coming, and figured it was about Jessica and me, so I was an emotional trainwreck - relieved, angry, sad, all over the danged place - when she told me one of my best friends and FBLA buddies had been killed not too long before in an automobile crash.

We talked about that for a while, and then the subject moved on, and then she told me she had something else I wasn't going to want to hear - Jessica was seeing some guy named Brad (his real name - if you know who he is, feel free to do whatever you want ), and she thought it was serious. Dinner was over. She took me back to the hotel, asked if I would be okay, and left.

A couple of more days went by - a ton more movies - and then I took the cab to the airport. No Jessica. I made the call, and got her machine. I told her I loved her, and goodbye. Then I called Brad (Lisa had given me the number). I actually got hold of him, and I told him that if he ever hurt her, I would know, and he would regret it. He said he understood - much more maturely than I was, to be honest, hoping for.

And then I flew home.

 

[Rel]

My story is hardly any great shakes compared to some of these (Torm: Ouch :\ ). But it was bad enough to become known (to me anyway) as "The Tector Incident".

I met this girl at a party a female friend had in high school. Miss Tector was nobody who I'd ever given a second glance at at school but we struck up a very nice conversation at the party and seemed to have a good repoir going. I had had my heart broken not so long before this and figured it would be nice to go on a date again. So I called the friend who hosted the party and asked for this girls number. She gave it to me along with the comment that Miss Tector had not been asked out a lot and would likely be thrilled by my invitation. With this good bit of news, I called, she said "yes" and we set a date.

Miss Tector did not have a car and had her mother drop me off at my house and it was a short, 10 minute walk to the local movie theatre and mall where we watched something forgettable and ate something I don't recall. Afterwards we walked home and her mother picked her up within minutes and I never talked to her again.

The bad part?

I don't think she said more than 10 words the entire time. The scintillating conversation that was the largest reason I'd asked her out had vanished entirely. I tried several times to start a conversation and she would just kind of look away cringinly as if she would simply rather die than carry on any sort of conversation with me at all. It became painfully awkward to even try and eventually I quit making the attempts and simply waited for the whole thing to be over.

Afterwards I spoke to anybody who would listen about the whole thing, trying desperately to dissect it and figure out what I had done wrong. The case was eventually closed due to insufficient evidence and became labelled "The Tector Incident".

It still bothers me a bit to this day and I had hoped she would be at our 15th year class reunion in October so I could ask her what went wrong. She didn't show up and not only did nobody know her whereabouts but hardly anybody even remembered her. Aparently I was not the only person she wouldn't talk to.

Reading back over it, that seems pretty lame. I guess I was blessed to find true love early in life and did not have to suffer through a lengthy period of dating, thus lowering my susceptability to "Worst Date Ever" syndrome. So I'll shut up now.

 

[Torm]

Rel -
Not lame, but definitely bizarre. Was the party the sort where she may have been a little tipsy, or something? Something that would have lowered her inhibitions enough to talk?

 

[Rel]

Rel -
Not lame, but definitely bizarre. Was the party the sort where she may have been a little tipsy, or something? Something that would have lowered her inhibitions enough to talk?

Nah. I was way too straight laced in my high school days to have been at that kind of party . I was spending too much time playing D&D and not enough time getting into trouble.

But that would have made a nice explanation:

"Tector? Oh yeah, I remember her. She never talked to anybody. Except this one time she got trashed at some party and wound up talking to some guy for several hours..."

 

[Xath]

*shrugs* I was told by a friend that I do trust to claims to have known the woman.

Either way, I found it wildly hilarious.

I never claimed to know her. I said I heard this story, it's really funny. My mom sent it to me in an email, and it talked about how this person was on the "Tonight Show." Then Queen_Dopp and I were watching Dumb & Dumber yesterday, and the skilift scene reminded me of it.

I don't know if it's true or not, but I would like to say that it was on the "Tonight Show" (I checked) and I can tell you from personal experience that it definitely is possible to stick your skin onto cold chrome plated metal.

 

[Humanophile]

I don't really have any tragedies for worst date ever. Closest I came was a passably pleasant girl, who I took to a local nature preserve/botanic gardens. However, due to losing track of time talking while we were in the nature preserve part, they locked up the showier parts. Which we had to walk through to get back to my car. Sneaking in through the gate and having to beg help from security was embarrassing enough to preclude a second date.

If we're talking worst relationships, though, I can probably pony up some good stories. I'm going to have to be typical and say that my absolute worst was my first relationship. I was your typical sheltered nerd who only started playing the game at seventeen. She had a really bad prior relationship (one of those things that's fairly common but really sucks when it happens to you), and decided that I would be the ideal tool for vengance against my half of the species. 'nuff said.

 

[Torm]

I can tell you from personal experience that it definitely is possible to stick your skin onto cold chrome plated metal.

And I can certainly tell you that the story seems just like something that would fit right in with other stories told by older members of my dad's side of my family in SW Missouri. So, for me at least, it has a high believability quotient - that it happened to someone, anyway.

 

[nerfherder]

Coincidentally, I've just been telling some friends about my worst date ever, which happened just before Christmas...

It was a blind date, and she turned up drunk. She spent the evening apologising and dashing to the loo. I had to make all the conversation, which gets pretty tedious after the first hour... We cut it short, because she wasn't feeling too well, and she kept asking if we could meet up again when she was sober. Not wanting to have a scene with a drunk woman, I said sure, and let her down gently the next day.

Still, it meant I had a great story to tell friends & family over the holidays

Cheers,
Liam

 

[Qlippoth]

OK, a little groundwork to explain...
Back in the day, when fire and wheels were young, I attended Johns Hopkins University. A lovely lass drew my eye; we had no classes in common, but at JHU, all the freshmen know all the other freshmen. I was in the Horrible Romantic Poetry phase of my life, and composed who knows how many hideous, pretentious, artsy little bits of verse for this gal, as though she'd run to the edges of the campus crying, "Heathcliff, it's me your Cathy" every time one of my furtive bits of dross slid underneath her door. Anyway, for some reason, she actually responded, but was honest, saying she wasn't spoken for but didn't want to be.

Reality be damn'd, I took up th' chase! (looking all Byronic/Keatsian/Polidoric, no doubt). It culminated in the first date being a party held by my fraternity (mind you, this was JHU, a gathering of geeks): the Black & White Party. Very formal, very crisp, until I found out that the "White" in the title wasn't about starch--it was about....a certain powderlike substance I had no intention (or knowledge) of doing. Neither did she. Unfortunately, in a vain attempt to add a little courage to my routine, I'd combined my cold medication with a certain non-Black or White herb to the evening's festivities, resulting in a rather brilliant fractal pattern that only I was able to see.

Leaving my ladyfriend with (at the time) a "trusted brother," I retired to the powder room to exorcise my demons, only to return to the extreme unhappiness of my date, who gave a full recount of the very impolite things my "brother" had decided to say. The taxicab never showed up, so we had to hoof it 8 blocks in the pouring rain back to her apartment. I was able to mutter "I'm really-" before the door slammed shut in my face.

A year later, she wrote a letter asking, "why don't you call me anymore?"

 

[reanjr]

Not going on one.