App Dates From Hell: Volume 3

You'd think I would be done by now but no, number 3 coming at you...

Put Up Your Dukes

If he had looked like this, I would have made it work... no, not at all.

Sometimes I think my bad dates are a result of the type of guy that I go for, although if you look at the people I’ve been out with, no clear patterns emerge so what that “type” is, I really can’t say. Still, when I look around, many of the great husbands are guys who I don’t know if I would have given a second glance to if they were my age and single. Clearly this means I should swipe right to more profiles that seem so-so, right? Maybe not… 

Enter Put Up Your Dukes, we’ll abbreviate to PUYD. PUYD had a profile that was borderline. I wanted to pass him by, but I thought, well, give him a chance. Maybe he’ll be just like [insert name of all the aforementioned husbands here]. After some chatting, we decided to meet up for coffee. I’m not someone who has any rules about making sure I’m always X number of minutes late to a date. In fact, I try to always be on time with everything and think unexcused lateness is just plain rude (a five minute grace period is always allowed).

Five minutes came and went. No sign of him. Ten minutes, nothing. After about fifteen minutes, he texted to let me know he was two minutes away. Try two times fifteen; by the time he arrived it was a full half hour after we were supposed to meet. For someone I was already unsure about, he wasn’t doing himself any favors. As he went to order (I was already happily sipping my tea), I set an alarm on my phone to go off in half an hour in case I needed an out.

The conversation began easily enough. Soon we were talking about travel and it came up that I used to spend my Christmas vacations on a particular Caribbean Island. He asked me what I thought the differences were between that island and another neighboring island. I gave him my thoughts but apparently I was “wrong.” Huh? Turns out, PUYD had been to the neighboring island in question and during that trip, spent a day on the island where I used to vacation. I was equal parts wanting to say, “Why did you even ask” and “I spent nearly two weeks there every year for over a decade, I think I know.” Instead, I just said, “Oh, ok.” Strike two.

We then found ourselves talking about growing up in the NYC area and the NYC private schools we had each attended. Maybe he isn’t so bad and we’ll find some common ground here. Instead, I found myself getting schooled as he informed me that it was unheard of for multiple generations of the same family to go to the same NYC private school. Well my good sir, my family is not the only one for whom this is the case. Even as I told him I knew of many other families where this was true, he continued to insist that it wasn’t. He then told me he had just had a revelation. Oh boy. He began a diatribe about why people choose to go away to college; allegedly it’s because eventually everyone ends up living where they grew up and thus college is the only time to live somewhere else. Again, totally not true. Strike three, you’re out.  

A few minutes later my alarm went off and accordingly I had a work emergency. Lesson learned: So-so = No No.