Saturday, April 17, 2010

Speed Dating

Saturday, April 17, 2010

At 1.30pm, I was asking my friends on FaceBook what I should wear to a coffee date, and forty five minutes later, I let them all know that I was nearly home!!!

Wow, that was a doozy. I really have to filter the online dates more carefully...much.more.carefully. I had no plans, so when the guy, who I'll call Malcolm, suggested meeting for coffee, I figured, hey why not, plus I hadn't had a coffee yet and was in need of my one and only for the day.

As I've mentioned before, I don't travel for first dates. I'll go anywhere within walking distance from home. By anywhere, I mean anywhere of my choosing. My hood is not short on cafes, so I opted for one in a side street where I hoped I wouldn't run into anyone I knew.

I saw him waiting outside the cafe and wanted to keep walking, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt and said hello. Even though it was a weekend, afternoon thing, I still made an effort to look ok...put on makeup, jeans, nice top. Malcolm, on the other hand, hadn't bothered...or perhaps this was him trying to impress. Black, screen printed tee shirt, faded black shorts and thongs. Nothing a good shopping trip with me couldn't fix.

It went downhill from there though. Coffees were ordered and already I was looking for his personality. Maybe he was nervous. Thankfully my latte and his cappuccino arrived. He asked why I didn't drink coffee and was I a tea lady (TEA LADY???). Ummm, I'm DRINKING coffee...

Still looking for his personality.

Me: "What do you do for work?"

Malcolm: "When I work I do general administration, but my contract was up and I'm in between jobs"

Me: "Oh ok, so general admin involves what, like filing and answering phones?"

Mal: "Yes"

About now, five minutes after meeting him, I decided we had no chemistry, absolutely zilch in common and I needed to leave. My sister in law had sent me a text asking if I could pick up my niece in twenty minutes...a necessary white lie. Our coffees were finished and I asked for the check. To my horror surprise, he pulled out of his pocket a VELCRO WALLET. Like the ones school kids use, except he's 46 years old. It was so tattered it looked like he'd had it since school.

I didn't want to wait, so I went to the register where I was told our total was $7.00. I had my wallet in my hand and could see he wasn't going to offer to pay for me, so I handed over $4.00 and walked towards the door. We walked outside, where I said goodbye and headed, rather quickly, home.

That was ten minutes of my life I'm never going to get back...

This gets added to the "dates not worthy of the time to get ready" list.

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