Bad Dates

We all have had them, this is one that sticks out in my mind. Writing about it is better than watching the debate.

The year was 1986. I was working as a line cook at a local eatery (Marie Callender’s) and I was studying for my degree in Physics.

I was a geek¹. 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. 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.

Still, a better love story than Twilight.

1. Still am, all these years later

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