Flashback Friday- Worst Date

I'm behind in posting some things I've been intending to post about the holidays, but that'll be for another day. Today I'm feeling inspired by a friend's Post to share a little inconsequential story from my past in spirit of another friend's Flashback Friday posting idea, because today is, after all, Friday.

Recently, all the Thwaits gathered together at Wolfgang and Anne's house in Tucson and performed/presented their talents (more on this event will be forthcoming). My sister-in-law, Daina has been working on writing her personal history in the past year and shared an experience that she'd written about one of the worst dates she'd ever been on. It got me thinking about my own dating experiences, which I decided were few, but from what I can tell- I didn't really miss out on much.

I had a steady boyfriend for a big part of high school, the dates are a little fuzzy but it was for more than a year that we were "official" and much more than that before (my first mention of liking him in my journal was when I was 12) and even a little bit after that (even after breaking up and a lot of ugly stuff I wasn't completely over him until my freshman year of college when our very last kiss told me there wasn't anything there anymore) I was still un-"officially" interested in him.

Wow, that was kind of weird, I hadn't really intended to go down that path. Anyway, I wasn't really big on going on dates like some girls I knew. I've always been a little bit introverted and not too comfortable when trying to get to know someone and I've also always felt like I had an ability to get a pretty good sense about someone by first impressions and if I knew there wasn't going to be anything romantic there then I wasn't terribly interested in giving a guy false hope. Not that the guys were beating down the door, mind you. And I wasn't as cold as that may seem either, I would usually go on a first date with most anyone who'd ask, but I would let the guy know that I was just interested in friendship if that's how it was.

I got married when I was 21, and my husband and I had been dating for almost a year before that, so there weren't a whole lot of potential dating years in there anyway.

OK, I've totally gotten off topic. The point of this blog was that I wanted to share my worst dating experience. The sad part is that it was a date that I initiated. When I was a freshman at the U of A I went to a party (thrown by my future sister-in-law, Julie) and there was hardly anyone that I knew there (and no, my husband was not in attendance- that may have changed things ;). This guy who was currently a senior at my old high school, who I'd never met before (he wasn't LDS and was big into drama, which I hadn't been) kind of hung around me all night so I invited him to go with my sister and I to a play (or a show- its a little fuzzy) that was happening the following weekend. Ok, so some might argue that it wasn't totally a date, but it was for all intents and purposes pretty much a date. I thought there might be something there and I wanted to find out.

Tammy had a seriously cool, very old Mercedes and she agreed to be our chauffeur for the evening. I remember running late, but don't really remember those details either (this is a great story so far, isn't it?), but we were feeling rushed to get there quickly. We lived on the south east side of Tucson and were headed into the downtown area so we took Golf Links west to the Aviation freeway. (I'm changing tenses here, sorry all you English majors). As soon as we get onto Aviation we feel a thump, thump, thump, and no, it wasn't the beating of our hearts, it was a flat tire. Tammy pulls the car over and parks on a side street leading into a very scary residential area. We're a good 5+ miles from our destination and you guessed it- without a spare. It was very dark and we were totally out of our element in this strange area of town. The only options we could think of were to walk the 5+ miles to the show/performance and get there as it's ending and then call my dad to come pick us up and change the tire, or walk to the closest pay phone (it was still a number of years before cell phones were prevalent) and call my dad to come pick us up/change the tire and hopefully make some of the show. There was/is nothing along Aviation by way of convenience store/gas station so we started walking in the general direction of 22nd street hoping to get lucky. The three of us amused ourselves pretty well with silly conversation but the walk still seemed to end up taking much longer than it probably actually was and the wait for my dad to come rescue us was even longer. By the time he came and fixed the tire, the better part of the evening was totally over and my date asked me to just take him home. I didn't think it was an especially terrible evening- it wasn't devastating to miss whatever the show or play was that we missed and we didn't have any long, awkward pauses in conversation, or any rude, careless remarks or behavior, but neither of us ever called the other again. I like to think that we both sensed that our relationship wouldn't be anything more than friendly, of course, I have no idea what he thought about the whole thing. Oh by the way, for those Tucson, Santa Rita friends who are dying to know who the guy was (because it's been such a juicy story) it was Matt Ramage-White.

Do you have any recollections of this night, Tammy? I'd like to hear your thoughts :) Also, I'd love to hear any of my faithful friendly readers' own bad date experiences :)