So the hands down winner of the worst date ever is Lorca, who was forced to go out on a date with her weird and scary stalker. I am pretty sure Lorca already owns a copy of The Rusty Nail, an erotica novella so I’m going to send her a copy of A Decent December as soon as it is published. Yay Lorca! I’m also choosing a runner up so I can give away a copy of The Rusty Nail, as promised.

After careful consideration, Big Ed Magusson’s cringe-worthy car crash of a first date, which ended with with his date bursting into tears and storming out of the restaurant, must come in second place. I mean, she actually cried at the table of a public restaurant. If my date did that (disclaimer: I have had that happen to me after I broke up with a guy in a restaurant), I would want to crawl under a table. Or start crying myself (actually, that would have been a much better reaction than rolling my eyes and telling the guy to grow a pair. Apparently, that only makes the wuss cry harder). Anyway, here is Big Ed’s worst first date experience.

I engaged in online dating for several years, and eventually met my wife that way. However, before I got there, I had many disastrous dates. I got to the point where I’d say, “either I’ll have a good time or I’ll have a story to tell.”

The top story was the date with a very insecure woman–which I did not realize until we met face to face. We sat down for drinks and she immediately asked, “so, what do you think? Do you think this has a chance?”

My reply: “Umm, I’d like to see how the evening goes before I make any decisions.”

“Are you sure?”

“Look, I can either be trying to have a good time or I can be in the back of my mind evaluating and judging everything that happens. I’d rather try to have a good time and save the judgements until tomorrow.”

This seems to calm her down enough that we actually have a pleasant enough time to move from drinks to dinner. Except then she asks: “I know you said you didn’t want to make any decisions until tomorrow, but what do you think about us?”

I’m thinking, “we wouldn’t have gone to dinner if I thought there was a problem” but this second question has thrown a yellow flag. So what I say is, “I really want to wait until tomorrow.” She argues with me a bit, but lets it drop.

So then during dessert she says, “Look, I know you said you didn’t want to make any decisions about a future until tomorrow, but what do you thing our chances are?”

Backed into a corner, I say, “I’m sorry, but I don’t see a future together.”

She starts crying. Then she says she can’t be strong and bolts from the table. I pay the bill despite a discussion about splitting the check before we went to dinner, lean back and have a cup of hot tea, and then go home.

The next day, there’s a message on my voicemail asking for another date. I don’t return her call.

Yeah, um, wow.

To read other first date disaster entries, visit my previous post. There are some doozies.