My First Date

I am pretty awesome at being a wife, if I say so myself, but I was a terrible girlfriend, and before that, terrible at dating. I had this idea to do a post of some of the bad dates I went on, but upon reflection I decided that it was probably ME that was the bad date in many of those instances! In any case, here's the story of my very first one (awww). 

I got asked on my first date shortly after arriving at BYU. That's right, I never went on a single date in high school. To be fair, I didn't turn 16 until June of my junior year so there was only a year's worth of opportunity. But I was a babe, check me out! Note the glasses and braces: 

[Incidentally I look exactly the same today, just with less metal on my teeth.] Why were the boys not lining up? That's what I want to know. Dummies!! Actually, it was for the best - I was glad to begin my dating life far, far away from the uncomfortable interrogations of my parents, so I had no regrets on that score. (Hi Mom! Hi Dad! Love you!)

Anyhow, my first week or so at BYU I got asked on a date and it basically made my life up to that point. He was a little nerdy, but super nice, and TALL!! Taller than me! I could not have been more thrilled. I don't remember at all what we did, maybe got ice cream and walked around? It was a warm night and I was hanging out with a tall boy who kind of liked me! I mean, not really, since he didn't know me at all yet, but he thought I was cute enough to ask on a date at least! Heaven was a place on earth and that place was PROVO, UTAH. (Are you laughing yet?) I don't think we had a ton in common but the small talk came easily enough so my armpits were only mildly sweaty instead of profusely sweaty - winning!

Everything was going swimmingly until the topic of conversation meandered to the Very Serious Issue of "Who Was the Coolest Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle." Now. Obviously. And clearly. And indisputably, as decreed by the heavens, the answer to this question is Michaelangelo. Before my date brought it up it had not occurred to me that this was an issue of any contention. MICHAELANGELO! He was hands down the funniest! And he had the coolest weapon, the nunchucks! He was the one that said "Cowabunga" all the time!! That's it. Case closed, he wins. My sister Courtney and I were such fans in elementary school that we may even have kissed the screen on occasion when he was on it. That's normal, to have a childhood crush on a cartoon reptile, right? (I had to google whether a turtle was a reptile or an amphibian just now...surprise, it's a reptile! I guessed wrong.)

Knowing my convictions, then, you can imagine what a shock it was to me when he confessed that his favorite Turtle was Donatello. Donatello??? The most forgettable one in the bunch? In my rankings, Donatello was dead last. He was boring, and nerdy, and his weapon was just a big stick wrapped in some tape. Michaelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello, in that order. Wikipedia tells me that "In all media, he is depicted as the smartest, quick-witted, and most intelligent of the four turtles, often speaking in technobabble with a natural aptitude for science and technology" and I seem to recall that maybe my date was going into engineering? Don't ask me his name, but I think I remember that. So in retrospect it makes perfect sense that he would have gravitated toward that turtle, but at the time I did not comprehend it at all. All I knew was that I had been having a pleasant evening getting to know this person, when all of a sudden this Donatello thing came out of left field and it was a DEALBREAKER. A sure sign of our incompatibility and conflicting worldviews.

We laughed off our differences and moved on to other subjects, but secretly, I think we both knew it was a dealbreaker. We ran into each other on occasion afterward but he never asked me out again. I wasn't particularly disappointed.

THE END