Dating column: the awkward date experience

“It’s the longest night of your life: that first date that is so awkward it hurts.” (Photo by Zoe Shuttleworth used under CC BY 2.0)

Macy Sliman, Staff Writer

It’s the longest night of your life: that first date that is so awkward it hurts. You cringe every time you even remotely think about it. You know, the one where he talks about his mom entirely too much or she walked out of the bathroom with toilet paper stuck to her shoe.

We’ve all been there.

So in the spirit of distracting ourselves from our own sad, maybe slightly scarring awkward dates, here is a lovely story from one of my friends.

“It was my very first date after a two year relationship. One of the guys I had grown up with had reached out and confessed his feelings for me. He promptly asked me on a date and I accepted.

The evening started out normal with him picking me up and us driving to the restaurant. However, things started getting weird as soon as conversation picked up. He immediately started talking about my dad. Not even kidding. Cue awkward part of the night. But wait, it gets better.

After about fifteen minutes of him going on and on about my dad and me doing my best to steer the conversation elsewhere, I bluntly asked him if we could talk about something else. I mean I grew up with the guy. Did we really need to talk about him on our date? Seriously?

My date agreed but then immediately launched into a “funny story about my dad I just had to hear.”

We finally arrived at the Sushi bar and were seated. I guess he hadn’t noticed I was left-handed. Upon seeing this, he jumped up in his seat and shouted at the top of his lungs, ‘I’m dating a mutant!”

Horrified and completely embarrassed, I tried to ignore the entire restaurant as every person jumped with me in shock at his outburst.

Also, as if to make things worse, this particular Sushi bar was in the Asian district with an extremely high ratio of non-English speaking Asians. I cannot imagine what they thought as they witnessed this very strange young man leaping to his feet and shouting at me.

To top the night off, once we arrived home, he walked me to the door (still talking about my dad, mind you). There was a lapse in conversation as I wished with every fiber of my being that he would just leave. Nope. He wasn’t done yet.

He asked if he could kiss me. That wasn’t the bad part. The bad part was when he didn’t even wait for me to answer; he just dove in for the gold. Not only did he slobber all over me, but also he completely missed my mouth, instead getting my nose and part of my cheek and upper lip. Ending the night with a high score of 10/10 on the awkward scale.”