I had a really bad date on Wednesday. I won't tell you her name because that would be indiscreet, but I will tell you that yes, I met her on the internet dating site. I won't tell you which one, because that would be indiscreet, but I will tell you that it rhymes with "ME HARMONY".

 

Well, first of all, her profile said that she was 34 years old, and she has pictures online that show her as a bit large. She told me that the pictures were just a week old, and I don't mind people who are large, as I am large myself and have until recently been quite a bit larger. But I think there's something seriously wrong when people claim that they're proud to be overweight. I understand that people struggle with it, to different degrees of success, but when you're at a point where you claim that you're proud of it, well, that's just total surrender. If it's ok to be overweight, then why is it not ok to want to change something about yourself? Why do you have to be proud of everything? Why can't you just say I'm overweight but I'm working on it?

 

At any rate, she was a bit pudgy in her online picture, but that didn't bother me. But when I met her, all I can say is that if the picture I saw was a week old, then she's in some intense training for a competitive eating tournament, because she was at least 50 pounds heavier. And if she's 34, then she's lived a hard 34 years.

 

None of it would really bother me, except the lies. And even lies I could live with, if the website were designed for people just to hook up; this particular site, though, was designed so people could find love, to find their "soul mate", if there is such a thing. I'm not sure that there is, but I can say with certainty that, if there is, one will never find one's "soul mate" by lying. They might find someone else's soul mate, but not their own.

 

My own approach to this is not to lie, or to gloss over the bad things about myself. Rather, I take what I call the George Costanza approach, and reveal all the bad stuff about me right off the bat. I figure, if a woman is looking for a rich guy or a father figure, I want to scare them away. So I tell them that I have two kids, I live with my parents, I'll never be rich and I don't want to be rich. I don't go out to clubs. I'm overweight. I don't drink. I make fun of everyone and everything.

 

Anyway, back to the really bad date:

 

I try to be nice. I want everyone to be happy and feel good about themselves, and I don't really care what they think about me. I'm sarcastic but I'm not bitter or anything. All I'm really saying is, I was willing to give her a chance. We'd talked on the phone quite a bit and she seemed really nice, so I didn't see any reason not to just play along and see where the evening took us.

 

We wound up at a bookstore talking about our favorite books and I was looking at a contemporary translation of the Dhammapada, and I told her what I liked about the Buddha's teachings and how they applied to just daily living. Whatever. It went ok. I wasn't trying to impress her, and I hope she wasn't trying to impress me.

 

I drove her back to her car where we'd had dinner and she said "Thank you for the intellectual conversation."

 

Something about using the word "intellectual" in a conversation like that is just wrong. Or maybe it was just the fact that she used it. Or maybe that it didn't seem to fit in with anything else she'd said all evening. I don't know. But it bugged me. It was just wrong.

 

And then she went on: "I didn't agree with everything you said, but still....thank you."

 

I'm not mad that she said this, or put off by it, but I am a bit curious why she felt it necessary to say. I wouldn't expect that, in any conversation over 30 seconds long, that any two people with any brains or opinions of their own would agree with everything that the other one said.

 

For the uninitiated, I should interject something here. Many conservative fundamentalist evangelical Christians feel that they're just right. Just because they just are. The Bible is true and Jesus is real and they know it. And while I can accept both of those statements as inherently true, it doesn't at all threaten my faith to accept that there are other things that are also true and don't contradict what I believe. I can believe that Jesus is real and the Bible is true, and I can still watch Star Trek without freaking out. But there are a great mMany conservative fundamentalist evangelical Christians who can't enjoy Star Trek, say, or discuss the Dhammapada without qualifying it by saying "I don't agree with all of it." In their own minds, they're defending the faith. Much in the same way that Richard the Lionhearted or  Bernard of Clairvaux defended the faith, except without killing people.

 

So, she didn't agree with everything I'd said and I know she could sleep that night secure in the knowledge that 1) I knew she hadn't agreed with everything I'd said, and 2) without having gone into specifics, she hadn't technically offended me.

 

But wait, it gets better.

 

We get back to the car and I get out to open her door. Maybe that's too old fashioned, I don't know, or maybe she really wanted to get away from me, but she got out herself before I could get to the door.

 

Not having been on a real date in 18 years, I wasn't really smooth. I would like to be like Pierce Brosnan or that long-haired guy in the I Can't Believe It's Not Butter commercials, but in reality I'm probably more like Homer Simpson or the Johnson guy in the cereal commercials who's always chewing so loud that the other guy can't fire him.

 

Anyway, she gets out of the car and I kind of stood there feeling stupid. I probably said something like "Well, it was nice, I guess we'll talk later" even though I was pretty sure we wouldn't. I wouldn't mind talking to her but I was sure that nothing was ever going to come of it, and there was absolutely no chance that I was going to try to kiss her goodnight. But then she held up her hand like she was telling me "Stop."

 

And she said, without preamble, "I'm at a point in my life right now where I'm just dating a lot of different guys. You know, there are a lot of guys interested in me now, and there are several at church who have been asking questions about me..."

 

And she said a bunch of other stuff but, to be honest, I had kind of tuned out everything after "a point in my life" because I was pretty sure I didn't have any interest in it, and when she got to the part about all the guys who were interested in her, I didn't really believe her anyway. Because if it was true, why was she trolling for dates from guys online? And why couldn't she just not be interested in me without telling me that there were so many other guys who were after her? And what kinds of questions were the guys at church asking about her? (Note: My sister thinks they might be trying to guess her weight).

 

Anyway, it was a bad date but at least it gave me something to write about. And I wouldn't have any material to write about a good date.