Oh Blind Dates...How I Loathe Thee

As I am mere hours away from yet another blind date in my life, (one that I was snookered into without being asked for consent), I figured I better get this story out here and published BEFORE tonight's blind date, so that, in the event tonight's young woman should ever stumble across this blog, she will know that this story is NOT about her, nor whatever may take place this night.

I actually have hope that tonight will be fun.

However, many, many moons ago I was out on a blind date. She was a splendid young woman. She was well-educated, personable, easy to talk to and she was quite attractive.

A mutual friend had been thinking about setting us up for a while, and finally approached us separately to gauge our interest level in being set up. I think there was some coaxing involved during both discussions, however, it was agreed that we were to go out.

So I was given this girl's phone number and made the call to set up our evening of fun and excitement.

I will admit that when I first saw her, I was quite impressed. As I already mentioned, she was, (and still is), quite attractive.

So the evening began. We drove around for a bit just talking and getting to know each other, and finally arrived at a restaurant that she had never been to and I had been wanting to try since I first saw it.

We looked over the menu and placed our orders and then continued talking. We had a pretty good exchange of banter and stories and overall, things seemed to be going quite well.

After our food arrived, she continued a story she had been sharing about a class she had taken. She was quite involved in the story and I could see that it was one of significance to her and why she ended up in her current vocation.

However, it was mid-way through that story, as I looked at her and made solid eye-contact, nodding along at the appropriate points, that I came to a very strong realization:

I just didn't care.

I didn't care about her story, I didn't care about why she graduated with that degree. I didn't care if this date worked out or not.

There were very few things in my life that I could have cared for less at that point.

It was then that I realized I was done with dating for a while. I didn't let on to her that I stopped caring. I continued to engage her and did my best to give her a good evening.

But after 20 years of failed dating attempts, after 20 years of putting my heart out on the line time after time after time, only to have it stomped on and returned...

I just didn't care anymore.

That was a while ago. I like to think my attitude has improved...somewhat.