Common Ground: A Community Post
Common Ground: A Community Post
The Worst Attempts at Love
One of the best Valentine's Day dinners I've ever had was spent with my husband and all our kids. It had been a rough stretch of sickness and travel, and we just didn't have it in us to plan All The Things. Instead, we had a mundane dinner in our dining room, and we two adults told every dating/middle school crush story we could remember —especially the ones that made us look dumb. We all laughed until we cried.
Parents of teenagers, I highly recommend this as a way of normalizing the struggles in this particular area of life.
The kids also delighted us by asking us a few of The New York Times’ “36 Questions That Lead to Love.” (I think we got stuck on #29, as evidenced above.)
My embarrassing story involved a first date on which I was asked if I planned to homeschool my children (First! Date! Let’s agree never to do that.). Ironically, the guy was hoping I’d say yes; I said no.
So it’s your turn in the comments: what story would you tell? Don’t be mean. But funny is good.
One fateful night in college, I was asked on a dinner date. Normal enough, right?
I drove myself (you never know who is gonna be a serial killer) and met the guy at the restaurant. When I tell the hostess I was there to meet a guy, she was confused and said she didn’t have anyone by themselves. He had told me he was there, so I called and assumed I was getting stood up.
He answers and says he will come get me, and that “we’re back here!”…..*we???*
Turns out he has failed to mention this was a retirement party for one of his military friends. So it was not in fact a dinner date, but rather a weird group date with a bunch of his close friends….made worse by the fact that I ended up talking to one of his friends more than him.
I had my sister call me an hour in to bail me out
:)
My story would definitely be my first Valentine’s Day that I had a real date. I was meeting him for dinner in uptown. He really wanted to get me flowers, but was running late, so he was literally running to meet me. He went to cut through a parking lot to save time, but didn’t see the chain across the entrance. He clotheslined on the chain and split his head open on the sidewalk. So we spent our Valentines in the ER snacking on the pastries he brought for me.