(So Not) Love Stories Part 2

5. When I went out with this guy on our first date, we were sitting in the back of his truck, talking about our jobs. I was teaching preschool then, and he remarked, "I don't know how you can do that". "You don't like kids?", I asked. He answered, "It's more that they don't like me". I said, "Oh, come on! I'm sure it's all in your mind". Literally, about five minutes later, a mother and her little boy were walking past, the little boy carrying an inflatable hammer he won at the fair. My date looked at him and smiled. The boy screamed and hit him in the shins with the bat! Hmmm... I should have taken that as a sign.


6. The Bozo and I met in June, the year before my sophomore year in college. In December, I was home for Christmas break, and we decided to go skiing. The Bozo had his skis sharpened before we started. After I went down the hill, I looked up to see that he was on the ground. I waited a few minutes for him to get up, but after a few minutes he was still there. I yelled up “Are you ok?” and he yelled back “No, I need help!” Well, this will sound bad, but at this point I was thinking “Oh for God’s sakes, stop being such a big baby”. See, The Bozo was a hyperchondriac - he was always sick, or had a bruise I needed to look at, or he had a strange pain somewhere, etc. I thought he was being overly dramatic and as I slowly made my way up the hill to him, I was thinking “Give me a break! Be a man!” When I got to him one of his skiis was off and he was holding his forehead.
I asked ,
“What happened?”
“I was watching you, and not paying attention to what I was doing, and I crossed one ski in front of the other, so I fell. When my ski came off it cut my forehead.” Typical of him to blame it on me. Everything was always my fault.
“Let me see.”
“I don’t think I should take my hand off.”
“Come on. Let me see.” I was still thinking he was overexaggerating until he took his hand away and I saw the huge gash in his forehead and the blood came gushing out. At which point, I responded as any calm, sympathetic, girlfriend would who is in complete control of the situation. By sitting in the snow exclaiming “Oh my God, Oh My God, O My God....”

Lucky for The Bozo, an angel of a guy stopped, wrapped his own scarf around The Bozo’s head, asked if I was ok (I was still being helpful by reciting my “Oh my God” mantra and had added staring into space and looking pale), and took off down the hill to get the Ski Patrol. They were there in no time with a stretcher attached to a snowmobile and after they put The Bozo on the stretcher, they asked if I was ok to ski down the hill to meet them at the infirmary (I still wasn’t looking well). I assured them I was and very slowly made my way down the hill to the infirmary, where I was told they had called an ambulance. I was to follow the ambulance to the hospital in my car.

When we finally made it to the hospital The Bozo asked me if I could call his mom while we waited for the doctor. So, I had the privilege of telling his mother, who I had never met, or talked to up to this point, “Hi, this is Jen, I don’t know if you know but I’m dating your son. Anyway, we were skiing today and he got hurt and has to get stitches. We’re at the hospital.” Then, I went back in and was told by the foreign doctor I could barely understand, something like, “You hold hand. I stitch”. I think I mumbled something like, “You no understand. Me. Blood. No good.” But he apparently didn’t understand me either because there I was holding The Bozo’s hand watching the guy stitch up his head. What a romantic date.

7. The guy I dated right before Jim had never been skiing. He asked me to help him learn. We unknowingly picked Winterfest weekend at 7 Springs, (the busiest, most crowded weekend of the season). First, I tried to keep him from losing his patience while we waited in line for over 30 minutes for his skis. Then, we discovered every single locker was full, except one, that was broken. We shoved our boots in it and hit the slopes.

Then, I bit my tongue to keep from laughing when he couldn't get his one boot in the ski. Then, I failed miserably at trying not to laugh at this muscular, 6'2" tough guy falling down the hill... repeatedly. Then, I tried to keep him calm when we got back to the lockers and discovered our boots were stolen. As I'm writing this, I'm wondering how we left? Did we walk back to our car with just our socks on? I've blocked a lot of this garbage out for my own safety.

So, I'm not going to tag anyone. If you have a bad date story, though, please do tell. I'd like to know I'm not the only one. Oh, and can I just say, "Thank You!", to my wonderful husband? Thank you for saving me from all that!