Date 1 Report

If there's one thing I cannot stand, it's liars. Lies, be they small and seemingly insignificant, will backfire on you.

I may become petty and picky here, but not without some good reason.

Things started off a little bit on the wrong foot. I arrived at the coffee shop about 10 minutes early and made a quick detour to force myself to arrive only 5 minutes early. I ordered my coffee and sat down at a table. It was exactly our appointed meeting time. Shortly after that my phone rang and it was my date, calling to ask where I was. Where I was? Where was he was more the question. Apparently he had arrived at the correct coffee shop 15 minutes early, not found me there and decided to see if I was somewhere else. I explained patiently and kindly (honest!) where I was. He showed about about 5 minutes later. Fine.

Now - imagine, if you will, you are expecting to meet someone for the first time. You have a (supposedly recent)picture of this person and some physical details. This person shows up and is not the person you are expecting to see. This person is a good 4-6 inches shorter than indicated on the profile he wrote. This person gave you a picture that must've been taken at least 10 years ago and some significant physical changes have occurred since then. Why would you lie about your height? Do you think I won't notice? Why would you give me an old picture? Do you think I won't notice the difference between now and then? All I can think of at this point is if this guy has lied about his height, deceived me with his picture, what's next?

So we had a quick coffee and then left for a walk along the Canal. It was a beautiful afternoon, sunny, a little bit of wind, not too cold - good walking weather. Here's when I thought we'd really start talking. We had previously talked on the phone for over an hour a couple of days prior. I did find it difficult to talk to him and felt myself really trying hard to get him to talk. Possibly it was just because we were talking for the first time, but it was awkward. Understandable. But now there we were, face-to-face, and it wasn't getting any easier. I tried. And I tried hard. I asked all kinds of questions. And all I got in response most of the time was a one-word answer. An hour and a half of one word answers.

I certainly wasn't expecting to meet the perfect guy on my first date in nearly a year, but COME ON!!! Give me something to work with here! Ask me something, anything! He never asked me a single question without me giving him some kind of lead up to it. I know I can be intimidating (and both friends and family will tell me so), but I was trying so hard to put this guy at ease and getting nothing in return. His profile tag line was "Laugh a lot". In the hour we were on the phone, plus the time we were together on Sunday, take a guess at how many times I laughed. Wild guess here. Anyone? A grand total of ZERO. Oh no, I'm sorry, close to the end of our walk, (as I was getting more and more frustrated) I did one of those sarcastic little "Heh" laughs. Probably not the best thing to do on a first date. But I was fed up.

Oh yeah, here's the petty part - the more he didn't respond and didn't ask questions, the faster I walked. And he couldn't keep up with me.

Final score: 4/10. He gets a few points for not crying on the first date. (Yes, this has happened, twice.)