Day 6 - This One Time, in High School...

In which we shall see: A much longer post than I had originally intended (with TONS of commas!), and... well, that covers it. Oh, and a video, and a snake.

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By consensus (or, 2 out of 3) today's topic will be: My Worst Date Ever. (I originally typed "My Worst Dave Ever", and well, that could be a whole 'nother blog!)



When I was a senior in high school I was living in the era of the "creative date". You couldn't just call someone and say, "Um, so, hey, I was thinking that, uh, maybe you'd wanna, you know, like sorta maybe gotothedanceiwthme? Huh?" Oh, no, you had to fill a garbage can (25-gallon-plus size) with Hershey chocolates, decorate the outside attractively and include a punny message like, "It'll be buckets of HUGS and KISSES for you if you go to the dance with ME! Look inside for my name!" and then get some suitably anonymous friend to deliver the can to the invitee's house (preferably while they were not home, so as to plant the can in the middle of their bedroom). Said invitee would then either call over all their friends to help dump out the chocolate and carefully unwrap each one, saving the individual letters you re-wrapped into a few candies and attempting to unravel the mystery name, OR start eating the candy and calling everyone they could think of until someone would admit who it was that (started stalking them) asked them to the dance. Invitee would then respond with an equally-or-greater creative response, a creative meal (such as Dinner in the Middle of a Grocery Store After Blindfolding Your Date) would be planned, and you'd go to the dance to have pictures taken. (No. You can't see any of my dance pictures. OK, maybe later.)

Like much of my high-school career, this aspect of life in Utah was destined to fail me. (Ooh, did that sound bitter? Refer to post topic, please.) About two weeks before a girls' choice dance (the norm for asking was around a month in advance - seriously) a friend of mine was backstage bemoaning that since she'd recently broken up with her long-term boyfriend (4 months, give-or-take) he didn't have a date to the dance, and she'd already asked her new boyfriend, and it WAS HER TURN, and she just FELT SO BAD!!! (Obviously, we were drama students. ((For accuracy's sake, I had to go back and add a couple more exclamation marks.))) Normally, this kind of talking would make me hate the speaker, but this girl was one of those it was impossible to hate (I hate those kinds of girls) and I happened to know her ex-boyfriend a little, so... I told her I would ask him. She replied, "Great! He's out on the front of the stage!"

Here's where I made a couple of mistakes. 1) Assuming it would be no big deal, I walked around the curtain to ask him to the dance. Obviously I was an idiot for forgetting for even one second that EVERYTHING in high school is a Big Deal. 2) I asked him. Just asked him, no candy, no balloons, no covering his bedroom with glow-in-the-dark stars or his driveway with candles spelling out my punny message. SO UNCOOL! 3) I asked him, catching him off-guard, thus a) robbing him of the opportunity to find some creative way to turn me down or b) getting a friend to sheepishly tell me he'd "already been asked" or c) giving him the chance to collect his thoughts to figure out how to turn me down, since [see point Number 1] and it takes more than a few seconds for high-school boys to collect the few thoughts they have (swimming desperately as those thoughts are in a sea of hormones and sugar). I asked him to the dance, calmly and cheerfully - and the expression on his face was my first indication that this was NOT, after all, a good idea. He said yes [see point Number 3], and since I didn't yet have the savvy to get myself out of the situation, I said "OK" and walked away.

I got back with the system and planned a Creative Dinner, and my date (oh, let's call him "Jeff") immediately began exhibiting a very Bad Attitude. It was stupid, and did he have to, and could this be any more lame, and would I please stop making him trip over things since he couldn't see with the dumb blindfold on! I was ready for the date to be over before we even made it into the grocery store. (Shut up.) We ate and headed over to the dance to meet up with the rest of our group (all high-school dances were attended in parties of 12 - 6 couples - or more). "Jeff" ran off to greet some friends while I waited in the line for pictures. Occasionally some couple or other from the group would trade out of the line so they could go dance for a song or two (right, did I mention this was a HUGE very-slow-moving line?) but my date never returned. Someone finally tracked him down just as we made it to the head of the line, and he started complaining loudly about having a headache. Pictures taken (they WERE, in fact, stupid - thanks, "Jeff") we realized we had been at the dance for an hour and a half and were ready to leave. (Not one song did he dance with me. Not ONE.) I was completely and utterly fed up, and just wanted to get to the ice cream.

This being a Creative Date, we girls had naturally planned an After-Dance Activity (as always, involving ice cream). The twelve or so of us headed out the front of the school to where we'd parked just off the long driveway that curved past the main doors. As we reached this driveway a car approached and the group split to let it pass. I was closest to the car, and as it drove by me I heard someone laugh - and I looked up just in time to get a water balloon in the face. Now, let me draw your attention to the fact that an object thrown from a moving vehicle does tend to pick up a fair amount of force... that balloon and the subsequent explosion HURT. I stood there dripping, half my head and the left side of my shirt soaked, face throbbing, and thought, "Huh."

My group figured out something had happened, and hustled me to a car - I sat in the front, "Jeff" sat in the back, and at one point I remember him saying, "How was I supposed to know she'd get hit with a water balloon?" as if someone was accusing him of it being his fault, or even actually caring that he was there. We arrived at my house, the site of the After-Dance Activity; I turned the group loose on the fooseball table (really), dried off a little (fortunately, thanks to my date, I no longer cared how I looked), and got "Jeff" some aspirin and water (in a cup) for his headache. He was extremely solicitous about how I was feeling - I really couldn't have cared less about his efforts at that point. Things broke up shortly and I drove him home, and it was the first and only time I did not get out of the car to give a date a hug or a handshake or walk him to the door or ANYTHING. I never spoke to him again, not even when I gave him his copies of the (lame) dance pictures. I also promised myself I would never go out with a friend's ex again, and I haven't. Lesson learned! (I'm also a little gun-shy about water balloons - the video above gives me the willies!)

This picture is because the dance was jungle-themed, and also because it kind of reminds me of "Jeff". My friend's breakup makes sense, eh?