My First Date

 

When you reach a certain age and realize you’ve never had a date, the thoughts that creep into your mind can be rather unsettling:  I’m so pathetic, I wonder if I’ll ever be able to push myself to give it a try?  Maybe I’m just destined to never have a date. If I had a date, would I even know what to do?  What if I finally got a date but then was too scared to commit to going through with the whole thing?  Would I take it slow, or would I rush the process? What if I don’t like the date?  What if I do?   It just seems there are so many expectations placed upon a person who has never had a date that to say that it’s overwhelming is an understatement.   When people first discover you’ve never had a date before, whether it be friends, family, peers, or whomever, they all tend to give you the same blank stare of shock: “What?  You’ve never had a date”?

It’s that same look people give you when you tell them you’ve never been on a roller-coaster or had a coffee from Starbucks.  It’s just one of those relatively common experiences people assume we’ve all had.  

Not me though, it wasn’t until quite recently I had my first date, and I must say it took a lot of mustering of courage to get the job done. I did a ton of research and, after much deliberating, devised what I thought to be foolproof plan for ensuring that I found myself the perfect sample (talk about pressure). After all, I certainly didn’t want to be disappointed, what with it being my first time and all.  I therefore thought long and hard about the kind of date I wanted, knowing full-well that this would be the one to forever be stored in my memory banks as that which broke the ice for all other (crossing my fingers) future dates to follow.  Ultimately, I was just hoping my date wouldn't be  sporting a glazed kind of look and actually turn out to be stoned (that’d be the pits). 

So I started with a list, outlining all the qualities and traits I expected in a first date:   desirable to the eyes, soft and tender, sweet, definitely rich, preferably dark (from some far away and exotic place), and if size matters at this point, I would say the bigger the better (and why not, right? If it’s going to be your first date, you might as well go for the full meal deal).   Then I searched all the ads in the newspapers and the online date sites hoping to find some semblance of a match.  

I did, and this is what I found. 

It was a date made in heaven; surely an experience I shall never forget,  nor shall I ever tire of sharing with others.