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# Bad Dates
- URL: https://www.sweatyspice.com/bad-dates/
- Published: 2024-06-28T01:49:01.000Z
- Updated: 2025-07-25T12:03:24.000Z
- Description: We all have had them, this is one that sticks out in my mind. Writing about it is better than watching the debate.
- Author: Geoff Anderson

The year was 1986\. I was working as a line cook at a local eatery ([Marie Callender’s](https://www.mariecallenders.com/?ref=sweatyspice.com)) and I was studying for my degree in Physics.

I was a geek[1](#footnote-1). I worked near full time to pay my way through college, so I didn’t really have a social life. 

Alas, there was a fine lass who worked at the same eatery, and for some strange reason, she liked me. Not that I noticed it, because I was a dork, science geek, and I really had no spare time.

One day, this fine lass, tired of waiting for me to notice that she “liked” me, just boldly asked me on a date. Me — an idiot — mumbled something and said sure.

Turns out that she really wanted to go out with me. I had almost no social graces, so idiot that I was, I pretty much just agreed to whatever she wanted.

It was to be a mid-week date, as we both worked the weekends, and that was fine with us. We went for a medium-ish meal. I do not recall what the restaurant was, but it was good, and we talked a lot.

She also selected the movie we were going to go see. And that is where it got *weird*.

Turns out that her father was a veteran of the Vietnam war, and he pretty much wouldn’t talk to her about his experiences. At all. But she felt that there was some bad ju-ju from that and she wanted to understand her father’s reticence to discuss that shit-show. The movie she chose was [Platoon](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091763/?ref%5F=nv%5Fsr%5Fsrsg%5F0%5Ftt%5F8%5Fnm%5F0%5Fq%5Fplatoon&ref=sweatyspice.com). Directed by Oliver Stone and staring some up and comers at the time Charlie Sheen, Tom Berenger, and Willem Dafoe, it was … *dreadful*. Violent, raw, and what you would expect from a Stone vehicle on the Vietnam conflict.

Needless to say, that was a one-and-done date. She went her way, I went back to the studies and flipping hash to make ends meet.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/11/f5/11f5bb9f-30c4-445e-afa3-85a47d260f6e/content/images/2025/07/a95649ea-af34-460b-8eb8-6b29187f6d34_850x668-jpeg.jpg)

Still, a better love story than Twilight.

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1. Still am, all these years later

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