Awkward Date Night will be the dramatic (but true) retelling of an awkward date. And trust me, I've had some doozies. However, since a "date" in college usually consisted of getting drunk in some guys dorm room with his roommate, watching a movie (usually either a horror film or "The Notebook" because college boys are rarely creative or subtle) and then kicking said roommate out so you could hook up...I may run out of dates. So I've decided to include friend's dates or just generally strange interactions with the opposite sex. I will use nicknames for the most part, unless I really dislike the person, because if you're an asshole, I believe in public humiliation.
So I begin withhhhh: The One Who Didn't Know Where He Lived.
To begin with some background information:
I was raised Roman Catholic. There are varying degrees of Catholic: Fanatics, Socially Acceptable, Cafeteria Catholics**, and those like myself: I ended up with basically no theological belief, but all of the Catholic guilt.***
As Frank McCourt said:
There is no childhood more miserable than a Catholic childhood,
except perhaps an Irish Catholic childhood.
This is not to say that my childhood was miserable. I just like the quote.
So anyway. The summer after my junior year of college, my church got a new seminarian (or as I called him, a baby priest. My mother did not approve.) He decided to start a young adult group. The idea behind it was to provide a fun (hah) way of meeting and bonding with other Catholics in the 18-25 set, since the church does a really bad job of engaging such folk. I joined because it appeased my mother (it made her much less likely to suspect the amount of hedonism that was occurring in my life) and because the guy at the sign up table looked so forlorn. (This is the young man who would eventually become TOWDKWHL.)
I went to the first meeting, which consisted of playing frisbee in the park near where I lived and eating some delicious chocolate chip oatmeal cookies. We prayed a little bit, and TOWDKWHL tried to rant and rave about the glory of Jesus, but The Seminarian (bless his heart) put the kibosh on that. It started to get dark, and most of the other people left. [Prior to the meeting, TOWDKWHL made a point of finding other girls to attend the meeting so that it wasn't just the three of us, because he felt that I'd be scandalized by spending time alone with two young men. He OBVIOUSLY didn't know me very well.] I mentioned to the guys that the park is under pretty heavy police surveillance after dark, because of a recent rise in drug trafficking. So we went back to the church and played poker (!) for a few hours. This was made all the more entertaining by the fact that TOWDKWHL kept insisting that they were Significant Catholic Figure cards, because Charlemagne was one of the kings.
That may have worked, if Athena wasn't one of the queens.
After we were done playing cards, TOWDKWHL asked if I could drive him home, as he didn't have a car. I agreed, and so we hopped in my ride and I started driving. I asked him where he lived.
He didn't know.
To be fair, he'd only moved to the area about a month prior. But seriously. He didn't know his own address. Or the street he lived on. Or what streets he lived near. He said he'd know it if he saw it. But there are a lot of roads in my county, and so this did not seem like a particularly solid plan. I pulled into the parking lot of the very same park we'd been in earlier so he could call his mom and get directions. This is the conversation that followed:
Him: Do you think it's ok for us to be here?
Me: Yeah, if the cops bother us we'll just tell them what we're doing. We should only be here a couple of minutes.
Him: No, I mean, you know...you're a young woman. I'm a young man. We're in a car, after dark. I don't want anyone to think you're promiscuous.
Me: ::disbelieving stare:: I think as long as you keep your pants on, we'll be ok.
That shocked him into shutting up. He called his mother and apparently she didn't know where she lived either (I became concerned about the mental health of this family) but gave us somewhat vague directions. We got onto the main road that would take us to where he thought he maybe probably lived. I asked him for identifying landmarks, such as the main highway near by, the dive bar where the army guys go on weekend passes and often end up arrested, or the old fashioned white church with the huge red neon "JESUS SAVES" sign.
None of these rang a bell and I began to wonder if he had actually traveled through a rip in the time space continuum to get to the meeting.
We continued driving. At that point I was on a pretty strong Say Anything kick, and Max Bemis was crooning some [mildly] offensive lyrics. At that point TOWDKWHL turned off my radio.
Now, I have a few rules that I adhere to pretty strongly. One of them is that YOU NEVER TOUCH MY RADIO. So I turned it back on. The kid turned off my radio again, and informed me that listening to such music would send me directly to the most fiery pits of hell.
First of all, I'm pretty sure the line that most offended him was "Jesus died a Jew" which is, in fact, true. Second of all, listening to risqué music is the LEAST of my sins.
I calmly informed him that if he touched my radio again, I would break his fingers, and then throw him out of my car. He left the radio alone.
I continued driving, and as we were passing aformentioned church, he shouted that we needed to turn. I almost spun my car. I very nearly broke his fingers and threw him out, just for being a moron.
And that was my first interaction with TOWDKWHL.
A few weeks later, I turned twenty one and had mentioned to the group that I would not be able to attend a meeting on that night, because I was going to the bar to celebrate my birthday. When I got home that night, I discovered this email, which I will present you in its entirety (with some editing to protect privacy):
Thanks for the info [my name] and happy birthday!
Be careful if you go the bar as you said in your e-mail. Just to let you know, getting "buzzed" where you start to feel the alchool kicking in is a venial sin, and getting drunk is a mortal sin, worthy of immediate confession to a priest, since you lose pretty much all of your rational faculties b/c you are under the influence. I tell you this b/c I care about your soul, and I'm sure [The Seminarian] would back me on this. So be smart, be cautious, and set an example for those around you. Being a Christian is a way of life.
This was made all the more amusing by the fact that I was wrecked when I read it.
I went to a few more meetings, and then realized that it was really getting in the way of my drinking time, and lost interest. Never saw the kid after that.
I still wonder if he ever learned his address.
*People really don't use the phrase henceforth enough.
**These are Catholics who pick and choose which beliefs to follow, usually to best suit their personal sense of morality. I'm not particularly bothered, but whoooo-weee my CCD teachers were NOT fans.
***In my age group, I'm fairly certain this is the most common kind of Catholic. I don't think you REALLY become a socially acceptable Catholic until you have children and must adopt the appropriate beliefs so that you can torture your children with an hour of religious education on a Sunday, when they'd much rather be watching Ghostwriter.
