A new restaurant was open for business near my place of employment. I live in a small town, so when there is a new restaurant, it’s a big deal. To my delight, they have a fantastic salad bar. Like a lot of guys, I had settled into the macho mindset of eating myself into a stupor as often as I could. The body paid for it. I’ve wised up since, and now I cannot overstate the value of overeating vegetables, especially from a large salad bar.
I became a regular, and wouldn’t you know it, one of the waitresses has taken a fancy to me. Aww, well, I guess she just couldn’t help herself. At least once a week I walk into the store and request to sit in Chris’s section. In fact I don’t even have to request it anymore. The hostess just seats me in her section.
A couple months ago she asked me, well, to go on a date, I guess. Her friend from high school was going to get married, and Chris wanted to go, but didn’t want to go by herself. So she asked me to go with her to her friend’s wedding.
Have you ever watched Scrubs? You know when they cut away to some off-the-wall ridiculous skit, and just when you are saying to yourself Huh?, it bounces back to a character who was just having a waking nightmare? I call that a Scrubs moment. Well, when she asked me to be her date at her friend’s wedding, I had a Scrubs moment—a waking nightmare!
I imagined, while being at the wedding with her, that she would point to various facets and themes of the wedding and say things like, “Oh, I want a dress like that at my wedding. I want my cake to have three tiers on it. I would need four bridesmaids. Don’t you think you would be more handsome in a dark blue tux? How many people would we invite to our wedding—assuming we have it here in town, of course? We should have it outdoors, maybe in a gazebo.” AAAAAAAARRRRGGH!!! And then I snapped out of it.
My response was one of disbelief-turned-to-obvious-relief when I said, “I am sorry, but I have to say no.” So I did not go on a date with my waitress to her friend’s wedding. Nightmare averted. Whew!
There was a little bit of awkwardness after that, as you can imagine. I kept a cool disposition and did my best to reassure her that I indeed did not have a Scrubs moment, but I don’t think I did a very good job. It was two weeks before I saw her again. By that time the awkwardness had evaporated. We were back to ourselves again. Two weeks later, her friend married, and two weeks after that, the entire episode had simply gone away, buried in the recent past.
Not too long after that she mentioned she had a couple of baseball tickets to the CM World Series. (Yes, it’s a small town, but CM is a big event!) She also mentioned she did not know what to do with them. I said “Well, you should take someone with y—HEY!” Okay, I am a man, therefore I am pretty dense when it comes to taking hints. So? “I’ll go with you, if that’s all right. I don’t mean to invite myself.”
“Oh, that would be fine. Here.” She gave me one of the tickets. “There are two games, but I can only make the later one at 7:00. I’ll see you there.”
“Cool! I’ll see you there. Thanks for the ticket!”
I arrived at a packed field shortly before 7:00. The first game was still in session, and a half hour before it was to finish. As 8:30 rolled around it became very clear that Chris was not going to make it. In the haste of it all, we forgot to exchange numbers, so I could not contact her via phone. What did I say about being dense?
