A Series of Unfortunate First Dates

I know that almost everyone has had a number of bad dating experiences, but mine were so bad that I almost never made it to a second date. And how many of you can truthfully say that one of your first dates led to the threat of a lawsuit? I’m not kidding.

The litigious young woman (I’ll call her Sue) knew of me because she was a lawyer who worked as an assistant in an office (tasked with hearing disability appeals cases) that my father essentially was the boss of. (His official title was Administrative Law Judge in Charge.) She asked me out for a carriage ride tour of old Savannah, which sounded interesting so I accepted. The tour was nice, but I thought we had zero chemistry, so I didn’t call for a second date. Once my father knew that I wasn’t interested in Sue, and not until then, he told me he was glad because Sue had been a frequent source of friction in the office. He said she was often contentious and was regarded as a chronically unhappy troublemaker. Some time later he reported to me that at work Sue had confronted him and accused him of defaming her to me, thus alienating my affections in an actionable case of workplace injustice. Hmmm, ask her on a second date—or risk a lawsuit? Tough choice. I didn’t call. Sue didn’t sue.

Around that same time I also had a first date with a young woman named Adele, which was the same name as her mother’s, so privately I called her Adele Junior. I knew she was planning to join the army, which maybe didn’t jibe with my feminine ideal, but our families were good friends, so I asked her on a date. When I went to pick her up at her parents’ house, we were awkwardly standing around with her family for a while and she decided to tell a joke, or rather mis-tell one. First, the setup: “Did you hear about the 2 peanuts in a dark alley?” After a moment of suspense, she hit us with the punchline: “One was attacked.” I didn’t get it, but her family burst out laughing while also shaking their heads, and finally her mother said, “That’s not right. It’s “One of the peanuts was assaulted. Assaulted.” You may not know this about me, but I care about humor. Adele joined the Army, but we never joined up.

I also had a first date with Flora, and it went well enough that I actually called her for a second date, and she actually accepted. But before the date, she called to say she needed to postpone it because she was having her kitchen re-floored that day. I didn’t think she was making up an excuse; I believed her, but it did feel to me like the image of her old congoleum being ripped up was a fitting metaphor for the romance being ripped right out of whatever relationship we had begun. I had to face the fact that, clearly, I had not inflamed her passions to the point of no control. She had a choice between new congoleum and me, and when she went with the congoleum, I was floored.

I know what you’re thinking: “How did this guy ever get someone to marry him?” And of course the answer is that I never “dated” my wife. We just hung out—except for 2 disastrous formal dates later in our relationship that she was willing to erase (mostly) from her memory.

(My thanks to Wildacres Retreat, where this essay was written.)