Story time!

Once upon a time, I went on my first first date with an online person.  Well.. he was a real person, but you know what I mean.

It all started a few years ago, when I reluctantly signed up for an online dating website at the insistence and with the assistance of a good friend.  She had been successful in meeting some decent guys and had been encouraging me to date.  (For the record, she’s not a cat person and I think that it bothers her that my Plan B for life is to become a verifiable crazy cat lady.)

Anyways, I made a profile with some photos I could scrounge and soon I had a message from a guy who seemed decent and fun.  I honestly don’t remember his name, so let’s call him Bubba to make the story sound more interesting.  Bubba said he would like to get a drink after work and offered to come to a bar near my office.  Ok.  Sure!  I can do this….

Another friend jumped on the bandwagon and encouraged me to go.  She took me for a pre-date drink, but then I was on my own…

Confident from the pre-date cocktail, I arrive and looked for Bubba at the bar, but noticed he had got a table.  Ut oh… dinner means a longer commitment…. I could barely handle drinks. It’s ok… I can do this….Well first I’ll try to get out of eating, but then I can handle it.

I start with saying that I’m not really hungry for dinner yet and that I thought we were having drinks.  Bubba doesn’t seem phased by this and insists that we might as well eat something.  After about an hour or so, I realize that we don’t have much in common and I’m ready to be done with the date.  At some point in the conversation and in an attempt to keep the conversation moving, I let the cat out of the bag that I don’t have plans for later in the evening.

Bubba keeps talking about his love of live music and I soon realize he’s trying to get me to continue the date.

Bubba is being persistent and not taking a hint.  I panic a bit because I am NOT going to continue on this date and since I stupidly told him that I didn’t have anything else going on for the evening, I’m going to have to do more work to get out of this.  I am also not smooth.

I quickly think about what I typically do on a Friday night and, at the time, I typically went to the grocery store because it’s all stocked up for the weekend and not at all crowded.  It was a nice strategy to get a good selection and avoid a crowd.  Plus, if I wanted to go out after, I still could (I don’t think I ever did….).  Come to think of it, I was well on my way to this:

Anyways, in my panicked state, all I can think to say is:

I really have to go before the grocery store closes at 10.  I always go on Fridays and it will just throw off my whole weekend if I don’t make it there tonight.

Now, it may not have been the best excuse to get out  of a date, but, hey, it worked.

And we never contacted each other, again.

The End.