He Picked Up The Wrong Woman
Dating stories: The ill-fated "blind" date.
So there I was, waiting in the lobby of Goodwood Barbeque at precisely the agreed upon meeting time. I am nothing but punctual, except for when I’m not. Like today when I was 9 minutes late to my pickleball date, and volunteered to be on the sunny side of the court as penance.
Back to the date so many years ago: I was there to meet my sort of blind date for dinner on my way home from work. No, he was not actually blind or visually impaired, but he also wasn’t exactly a “blind date” and this is part of why it was fated from the beginning.
You see, I had met this guy at a house party months earlier but he didn’t remember that. Perhaps I’m forgettable, but in this case I think it said more about his general with-it-ness. His sister, a friend of mine, really wanted to set us up, and I said yes.
Full disclosure: I don’t remember his name (it happened nine-ish years ago), but this story will be cumbersome if he’s nameless, so let’s agree to call him Chad. When I arrived in the lobby, I did a quick scan of the restaurant in case he’d grabbed a table. Nope, no solo parties seated anywhere. Seeing no one sitting by themselves, I sent him the expected, “I’m here, inside” text and took a seat.
Five minutes went by. Then five more. So I texted again: “Are you on your way?”
No response.
Feeling bugged—you’ll please remember that this wasn’t one of the dates I was super looking forward to anyway—I waited another five minutes and tried calling him.
No answer.
So I sent a quick text: “Hey, looks like something came up. I’m taking off.”
And just then, Chad approached me from the main section of the restaurant and said, “Hey Emily, I’m Chad. So, are you ready?” He seemed flustered as I speechlessly followed him back to a table at which I had definitely seen a guy and a girl sitting.
I was nearly positive he’d booked back-to-back dinner dates with two different women at the same restaurant and was a complicated mix of impressed at his audacity and officially, 100%, turned-off. But as we sat down at the fateful table and before I could make my bugged accusation, the waitress showed up with food, and everything suddenly became very clear.
Chad had arrived at the restaurant early, and there was a blonde woman (who I didn’t think looked much like me) waiting in the lobby. He assumed she was me, didn’t introduce himself or confirm her name as most people do—“Hey, I’m Chad” or “Emily?”—and they were seated.
Then Chad and Fake Emily spent 16+ minutes getting to know each other and placing their orders, all while their phones were buzzing with texts and phone calls from the people they were actually there to meet. I think it was Fake Emily who finally checked to see what was going on with her phone, and knew she was in the wrong booth when she saw messages from her friends asking where she was.
The waitress was unsure of what to do, since I was definitely not the same woman who’d ordered the brisket sandwich with fries. Chad was trying to play the whole thing off like nothing unusual had happened—he didn’t even laugh about it—and I didn’t want to do anything to prolong the ill-fated date. Are brisket sandwiches my first choice? Not usually, and I do typically like choosing my own food. But hey, it was there, it was a carrier for barbecue sauce, and not ordering a new entree was the quickest path to exiting this fiasco.
So I ate it.
“How was it?” you might be asking? Can’t remember.
Can I remember anything we talked about? No.
Do I remember who the other woman was there to meet? Those details were fuzzy. I think she was there to meet a couple friends, so I have no idea how she ended up thinking Chad was part of her party, but she did.
All I know is that I hope they’d exchanged enough information to find each other on Facebook and go out on a proper date. Wouldn’t that be the greatest meeting story ever? For them, not us. A sense of humor was notably absent and that’s one big reason Chad and I couldn’t be together.
Because hey, if you can’t laugh about ending up on the wrong date, what can you laugh about? If there’s a takeaway from this story, it’s to confirm your dates or meetups. Or don’t—you’ll get a story out of it.