Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Red or White?

When I first saw him, I flashed on those photos where one person morphs into another—George Bush becomes a monkey or the young, beautiful women becomes an old hag. I couldn’t accuse him of using someone else’s photo, though I’ve heard that is not uncommon in internet dating. Instead, I could imagine how the younger, thinner person preceded the man. The chipped tooth and the unfortunate combination of a checkered shirt with striped pants were features unrelated to his profile photo, but I was trying to be “optimistic!” and “open minded!” as counseled by my mainly-married friends. So, I mentally gave him credit for being on time.

Once seated, he inquired, “Red or white?”

“I’m pretty flexible but I’ve been more into red recently,” I replied.

“I checked it out online so I know just the one—the Craggy Creek chardonnay!” he declared.

“Uh, sounds good,” I said.

I’d remembered to re-review his profile before showing up so I’d have a couple of ready topics of conversation. Too bad I had to dip into those even before the wine arrived.

“Where is the best place you’ve ever been scuba diving?” I asked.

“Well, I haven’t really gone diving since law school” he said.

“Oh. When you did dive, where did you like to go?” I asked, the math between now and law school eluding me for the moment other than knowing that it was quite awhile ago.

“I liked going to Kauai. You could just walk into the water off the beach and see great stuff” he said.

“I’ve always wanted to go to Hawaii,” I said.

“We’ll get married on the beach in Hawaii,” he proclaimed, gazing longingly in my direction.
Fortunately, the wine arrived that very moment. The maitre d’ unscrewed it with a perhaps not totally necessary flourish.

3 comments:

MF1073 said...

I love this story and can totally relate. I went through a date very similar. I might even write it down for your blog. Marc F.

Unknown said...

Great idea, great story, great writing. Too bad about the date. If you had seen him again you might have introduced him to a nice white wine like shiraz!
Myra

KarenM said...

LOL hysterically funny! You can't make this stuff up. I have to give you big "props", because I don't think that I could keep a straight face. Thanks for sharing another great story, which gave me an abdomen splitting laugh! Karen