Not a love connection

“I had a guy try to take me to Loaves & Fishes for their free lunch on St. Patrick’s Day! Thank God I was the one driving. I turned around and dropped his butt off right back where I found him! No, it wasn’t under a bridge. It was at his friends’ house he was crashing at. I should have known. I attract losers!”
—Rhonda Watkins

“I had a date planned once, and got stood up for it because the girl went manic-depressive and was jailed for stealing an RT bus. She drove it so fast on mountain roads that the police actually broke off the chase fearing for their own safety.”
—Ray Terlesky

“I got set up by a co-worker with a nerdy Asian guy. At dinner, he commented on my arms, saying, ‘They’re really big.’ The conversation turned to exercise. Then he suggested I ‘use less weight and more reps.’ He was probably 15 pounds smaller than me. I wanted to put him in a chokehold with my huge biceps!”
—Lyn Win

“I was 19 and really liked J., a lanky musician I’d met at a party. He drove an El Camino. For some reason I didn’t take this as a bad sign and, when he invited me out for a night at the movies, I was thrilled. He drove me to a midnight screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and everything was going great until his ex-girlfriend (and mother to the child I had, heretofore, not known existed) showed up and sat down with us. Apparently J. had invited her, too. And why not? They had a lot to go over. As the rest of the audience did the time warp and threw things at the screen, I listened as J. and his ex discussed child support and day care, mutual friends, parties and upcoming plans. I would’ve left, but he had the keys to that damn El Camino.”
—Rachel Leibrock

“I had a guy try to cook a chicken for me. [He] left the head and neck and other nasty stuff in the bird, still frozen in the center.”
—Barb Ulrich Patterson

“We meet at a pub for dinner. We look at the menu and I notice there aren’t many vegetarian options. He asks what I’d like, and I mention I’m vegetarian. We have a 15-minute conversation about my reasons for being vegetarian. We decide to order the nachos with no meat and share it. He goes [to the counter] to order it, and when he comes back, he says, ‘Nachos are on the way!’

I cheerily confirm, ‘No meat?’

He says, ‘Yep! No meat!’

The waitress plops down the plate of nachos smothered in ground beef. Not a single chip can be found without a pound of cow on it. He is hungrily mackin’ down on the cheesy goodness and says, ‘Is everything OK?’

I smile and chipperly point out the heaping mound of beef in front of me. He says, ‘Oh, you don’t eat meat?’(What was that 15-minute conversation we just had?) I awkwardly laugh and say, ‘Uh, nope.’

He stuffs another few chips in his mouth and says, ‘Well, can’t you just eat around it?’ Needless to say, first date was the last date.”
—Natalie Ervin

“The guy asked the waitress out in front of me and, we moments later found out, in front of her husband and kids who were in the next booth.”
—Mel Gelbart

“I was nervous, so I didn’t eat beforehand. We went to a dive bar, and this tranny next to us got into a fight. There were spilled drinks and feathers from his boa flying everywhere! I had too much and got really drunk. I excused myself to go to the bathroom, but before I could make it there, I threw up all over the bar. The waitress got my date and told him, ‘Your girlfriend is really sick. You have to go get her.’ I wasn’t his girlfriend, but he took me home and then I threw up in his car. We sat on my parents’ couch sobering up. He held my hand and he asked me out again for the next night. The next morning I was crying to my mom, saying, ‘I can’t believe I did that!’ It was so unlike me. We went out the next three nights in a row. We’ve been together two-and-a-half years, and we’re very happy. We just laugh about it now.”
—Deanna Frederickson