What It's Like To Fall In Love

With Valentine's Day almost here, I find myself reflecting on the one hundred years or so that my lovely wife and I have now been together.  Did I say one hundred years?  Maybe it's only ninety-nine.  Time sure does fly.

2002.

I met my lovely wife in the summer of 2002.  We were high school sweethearts.  And by that I mean she was still in high school and I was not anymore.  I'm nearly five years older than her.  At the time I took a lot of flack for it, but hey, I ended up marrying that girl so I guess the moral is... well.... I don't know.

The first time I met my lovely wife, she was working at a convenience store.  I bought a drink and a pack of gum.  This is an important detail to the story, so pay attention. Future Lovely Wife was so enamored by my hotness and raw sexual aura that she fumbled around and only charged me nine cents for the pack of gum.

Score! 

Hey, even if this relationship never went anywhere I could at least say I got a really good deal on a pack of gum.

Believe it or not, I never asked her out.  We got to talking on the phone a lot, and on ICQ (uh-oh!) and it turned out that while she'd had boyfriends before she'd never actually been out on a real date.  Future Lovely Wife had a great rack and gave off all the right signals, so I told her I was going to take her to dinner and a movie.

And I did just that.  But first, a stop in the park - because, really, what's more romantic than taking a seventeen year old girl to a boring park when you promised her dinner and a movie?  You got it - convincing her to give you a sweet back massage in the park!  And gosh darn that was a good back rub.  This was where we shared our first passionate kiss.
(On a side note, when I finally proposed to her years later so she could become Lovely Fiance I did so in the same park.  I'm a sucker for nostalgia and tradition)

So I took her to dinner at Frankie Pesto's.  It's always been a great date spot.  Vines on the wall.  Sinatra playing while you eat.  And, since I don't drive, there's a very convenient bus stop only a few feet away from the restaurant.

The movie of choice was The Master of Disguise, starring Dana Carvey.  You may have noticed it showed up on my Top 11 Romantic Movies list, only because it was from our first date.  That movie is otherwise complete and total shit.  But, if you think about it, that movie needed to be total shit in order for us to not want to watch it.   I mean, seriously, can you imagine if your first date movie was something like Star Wars?  You don't want to actually watch the movie during a first date, but at the same time it's fucking Star Wars.  That bloody classic deserves your attention.  Unless, of course, it's The Phantom Menace, then by all means start making out.

And that's what we did, because The Master of Disguise is a waste of film, and there were only five or six other people in the same theater as us.  We sucked face in the theater during a shitty movie where Dana Carvey repeats the line, "turtle turtle turtle."  Boy, do I know how to show a girl a good time.

Our hot make-out session was only interrupted for a moment by two little girls.  They were at the movie with their parents a couple rows ahead of us and took the time to inform said parents that we were, indeed, "ewwww kissing!" And those two little girls grew up to be Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus.  Okay, that last part is a total lie, but I'm sure they remember more about The Master of Disguise than I do.
(Side note number two... I bought The Master of Disguise on DVD for Lovely Wife one year for our anniversary.  We've still never sat through the entire thing)

There was an awkward moment during the movie though.  Future Lovely Wife was concerned that I wasn't having a good time because I kept getting up, leaving, and then coming back.  She thought maybe I didn't really like her... even though I had already stuck my tongue in her mouth by this point.  Silly. In all actuality, I was starting to get the flu and I kept running to the washroom to blow my nose.  I didn't want her to see me blow my nose.  Thought it would ruin my chances of getting in her pants later.  Am I right, ladies?  Exactly.

After the movie I took her back to my place.  Okay, I took her back to my PARENTS place because I had moved back home for a little while.  This was an opportunity for Future Lovely Wife to meet my mom and dad, even though it was now close to midnight.  Mom was asleep.  Dad was awake when we came through the front door, and he was in his tighty-whities, peeing with the door open.  For the whole world to see.

This is where I'd like to end the story of my first date with Lovely Wife, and I'd love to be able to do so in some classic Disney-ish fashion, where we share another passionate kiss and promise ourselves to each other forever and ever.  Instead, I tried to get in her pants.  But that's tough to do when you live with your parents.  Some things take a little more time.

And hey, would'ja look at that - I ended up marrying her.  Now that's a love story.

- ryan of the ryan fan club

For Hallowe'en she was Supergirl and I was Johnny Depp.

The Worst Date I'd Ever Had

Everybody's had one really awful date.  True love doesn't just fall into your lap, you know.

I was decent looking in 2002.

Mine occurred in Spring 2002, about three months before I met the girl I'd eventually spend the rest of my life with.

The worst date I ever had was with a girl we'll call "MargarineGirl".  Not because I'm trying to be mean to her, but because I can't actually remember her name... and honestly, I never really knew what it was for certain to begin with.  One thing I'm sure of, is her name sounded like "Margarine".  Yep, I went on a date with a girl who's name I couldn't even pronounce.

C'mon, she was really pretty.

MargarineGirl was a friend of a friend whom I'd always thought was pretty attractive.  And she was really cool too.   I bumped into her one day downtown and she was looking for a job.  I offered to pay her to clean my apartment for me.  She laughed about it after actually considering it, and honestly I had hoped she would do it.  My roommate at the time, Joshua Lindsay Mercer Clements, was the type of guy to clip his toenails and leave them on the living room table.

Gross.

Anyway, when I offered her some temporary employment she asked why I didn't ask my slutty girlfriend to clean my apartment for me.  I let her know that I was recently single, which resulted in me getting MargarineGirl's phone number and the promise that she wouldn't be cleaning my apartment for me.

I called MargarineGirl later that week to set up a date.  She was in the bubble bath while talking on the phone to me.  I still think that's kinda awesome.  And really, it made me extra excited for our upcoming date.

This isn't actually MargarineGirl

We met at a Second Cup coffee shop, one that doesn't exist anymore and has been converted into a Starbucks, and she was right on time.  That's a big deal to me. Punctuality is important.  Especially if I want to get naked and do the dirty with you.  It's not as important as cleanliness, but it's still in the top five.

So we each had a hot chocolate and talked.

About nothing.

Nothing at all.

I've had quite a few first dates in my time, and usually they're a great chance to get to know someone new.  An opportunity to chat about what you like, what you enjoy doing, where you're from, etc etc.

Nope.  MargarineGirl was boring as fuck.  And so was I.  I actually hope that somewhere she's blogging about a boring date she once had with a guy named BoringSelfIndulgentFanClubGuy.  That would be pretty sweet.

We tried a couple times to get the conversation ball rolling, but nothing.  She asked me why I had my own fan club.  I told her.  She didn't think it was funny.  I asked about how her classes at Queen's University were going.  I think she said she was a literature major or a psychology major... so she had nothing really important to say about that either.

To put this in perspective, I was once stood up on a blind date with a girl from ICQ (remember that?) and it was a way better date than the one with MargarineGirl.

I don't know what I'm doing here.

We then decided this was the most boring date we'd ever been on, and that I should just walk her home.  I didn't really want to, but the weather had turned to rain and I was the only one of us that had an umbrella, so I did the right thing.  Also, maybe I'd get a one-afternoon stand out of this.  Perhaps she was one of those cool girls who were just really into random sex.

Nope.

We had more boring conversation about nothing at all as we walked back to her place.  And after what seemed like forever, but was really only fifteen minutes, we were at her front door.

"I hope you understand," she said, "that I'm not going to invite you in."
"I hope you understand," I replied, realizing that any random sex was not going to happen, "that I don't really want to come in."

Then I walked myself home.  And, really, I actually meant what I said to her.  In that moment, I really didn't want to go into MargarineGirl's place and do dirty things with her.  Even if I had been thinking about it all week and what it would be like.  I know it sounds crazy that while I hadn't been offered any sex, if I had then I may have turned it down.  I had concluded to myself that she'd probably be very boring in bed too.  And she would probably think I was extremely boring in bed too.

We were both just boring as fuck that day.

And that made MargarineGirl the worst date I'd ever had.

- ryan