Memo from JB: Before It Festers
Honesty is the best policy when reviewing date-night disasters.
My wife and I like to play a little game. This game is either the worst idea for a relationship or the best. I’m not sure. I call it, “If this was our first date, would we go out again?” We literally have the conversation, sometimes mid-date, often post-date, and ask ourselves, “If this truly was our very first date, would we go out with each other again?” You might be surprised at how often the answer is no, but just asking the question seems to snap us back into place. This prevents what moms often call “letting it fester.”
This tradition started because our very first date was a complete disaster. I tried too hard to impress. At the time, I drove a Jeep with no top and no doors that bounced like a ranch horse. I took her to a dive Thai restaurant that was BYOB. Turns out, she does not really like to BYOB. She likes IPEBOW (I prefer expensive bottles of wine). My pre-purchase of beer from Thailand failed to impress. I thought I was pretty slick ordering everything for both of us, items not featured on the menu. I ordered a specialty soup that she later referred to as “tree-bark soup.” I slurped it up like a chocolate fountain. I ordered a whole grilled fish that stares at you as you dig into the sides with chopsticks. She was not impressed and found it disgusting. The date ended all too quickly with her hardly touching her food and me asking for an entire fish and tree-bark soup to go. We wrapped up our date early and uneventfully, considering it was a work night and I had to get up at 4 a.m. for my radio job. We ended the date with a Japanese-like bow to each other and sprinted to our respective homes.
I realized the error of my ways early the next morning. I looked for an opportunity to redeem myself. We lived in the same building, so I hung all the leftovers from her doorknob with a note letting her know how much I wished for her to enjoy them as much as she had the night before. Somehow, she found it amusing that I hung tree-bark soup and leftover rotting fish on her door handle, and went out with me again.
It wasn’t until many years later we started playing the “If it was our first date” game. We started playing this game when she took me to a couples’ dinner and concert. This sounds good until you break it down. I did not know this couple, nor did I like the performing artist that evening, the DJ Girl Talk. It would take me days to tell you why a blind couple date is horrific, so I’ll focus on why an evening of Girl Talk was like a living nightmare. It was an awkward evening of small talk followed by waiting to get into Austin Music Hall to see the computer perform. I say that because Girl Talk has never done anything other than mash up popular songs using his Mac computer. Everyone attending is chemically altered (if you know what I mean) and dancing to a computer on autopilot while Mr. Girl Talk pretends to touch a button every now and then. Eventually, there is no clear division between the people onstage and the people in the crowd, other than I’m the only one not tweaking my brains out, along with my wife, who gets a natural high hearing Erasure mashed up with Led Zeppelin.
I was such a cranky, bitchy old bastard that this was the night that we started the game. We both adamantly agreed that if this had been our first date, we absolutely would never go out with each other ever again. No question.
From that day forward, usually mid-date, we ask ourselves what this would feel like if it were our first date. We’re honest with each other, and it often snaps us out of our dating funk before the date is ruined.
I could give you 100 examples of bad dates that we have acknowledged, like the time she made me go to Tina Turner in San Antonio, or the way she hates when I think I’m being cute with the waitress when she asks if we would like a to-go box and I say, “You can keep the food but I’ll take the box.”
The glare is enough to say, “If this were our first date, never again.” It keeps us in check. For us, acknowledging that it is or will be a bad date is often enough to correct it before it festers.
JB Hager, on Kids Today
Share