When You Wish Your Blind Date was Actually Blind

There are dates that stay with you. Some of them are good. Others of them get saved to swap with your friends when sharing your collective bad date stories. Writers just save them up until they’re running short of column ideas.

Rockies Baseball. Photo by Carah Barnes

When You Wish Your Blind Date was Actually Blind

Blind dates are, as you’ve seen on TV, not uncommon amongst single people. The most memorable I have ever had started when a friend told me she knew the perfect guy for me. He had a pulse, a job, liked science fiction and baseball. In her mind, these were clear indications that we were meant to be. We talked on the phone, and set up a date to go to a Rockies game.

He came to the door with a large bouquet of fresh flowers, admittedly, a very nice touch, and off we went. That was when I noticed the first indication of his personality disorder. This debilitating symptom caused his eyes to be locked directly on my chest.  I started hoping an Alien would burst out of there and attach itself to his face.

We got to the ballpark, and found our seats, which were just next to the left field foul line, in perfect foul-snagging space. He had brought his glove. Sadly, that was the closest thing he had to baseball knowledge.

When he tried to impress me with his baseball knowledge,  I nearly cried. Or possibly that was merely the strain of repressed laughter. He knew only the names of the marquee players. He didn’t even have a clue whether the team had a winning record or not. The most rudimentary indicators of a baseball fan were missing, and I quickly realized he wasn’t going to be able to converse about baseball beyond the score and inning of the game. He could not report the current strike count, as he wasn’t watching the field. My chest was, apparently, much more interesting.

At this point, I tried to see if there were any other topics we might be able to discuss, or upon which we could find some common interest. This is when I discovered the second part of his personality disorder. He was one of the most boring people I had ever met.

I tried to talk about science fiction. I liked good stories, with well-developed characters and worlds. He liked cool ships and gadgets. Had I ever read “super-obscure sci-fi book” which had his favorite type of really weird ship in it? Nope. I was pretty sure he was the only one that had read it.

He couldn’t remember the main character’s name, but, he could remember the length, breadth, carrying capacity and fuel source for the JC-99B carbon atomizing teraflop juggernaut carrier vessel.

I listened for what seemed like months as he prattled on about the characteristics of the Crapinator capacitor powering the ZippityWhoCares ionizing burnanator, and as I allowed myself to float away from his monologue and back to the baseball game, somehow, I knew that we were not soulmates. I only hoped that when the night was over I could gracefully exit his car without taking his eyes, which were, of course, still glued to my chest.

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