Worst. Date. Ever.

OK Internets, we've all had bad dates. Like the time we somehow agreed to a triple-date at a RenFaire in which one of the other couples was our ex-boyfriend who recently dumped us and the person he dumped us for, or the time the summer after sophomore year that we went out with a basketball player who had developed a strange fascination with us (demonstrated by the large purple hearts he drew encircling our face every place it appeared in our own yearbook, which was a lot of times, considering that we were on the yearbook staff and tended to put pics of ourself and our friends wherever there was space) and he sat on the same side of the table with us at Chili's and kept trying to look down our shirt and then later he turned out to be the absolute worst kisser ever (tons of slobber, more than the usual number of lips somehow) in the 10-second good-night-and-good-bye kiss and we never went out with him again but we think he told his idiot friends that more had gone on because when we ran into him at the video store, the friends were all googly and snickering. (And but then he waited on us and our mom and grandmother at a Red Lobster years later, having flunked out of college, so there.)

But the other day, I saw what might've been the Worst Date Ever. After work on Friday, I took Kid Gleemonex to the Coffee Shop at the Edge of the Continent to chill and watch the ocean, and I couldn't even read my book (Patrick Hughes' Diary of Indignities, a fabulous read that you should all buy right now) because I got sucked into the vortex of this date a few tables over.

The couple were both around fifty, and dressed as if just off of work -- both teachers, as I came to discover. The guy had his back toward me, but he was clearly no great prize -- kind of dumpy, with the sort of falling-apart-at-the-seams shirt/tie/sportcoat ensemble that a certain kind of male non-coach high school teacher is partial to. The lady had it much more together -- a very pretty skirt, quite a flair with the jewelry, and nice hair.

And this guy -- o Internets. This fuckin guy. He opened his cake-hole and never stopped yammering the entire time we were in there, regaling his date with the tee-ninseyest details of his BORING-ASS JOB for forty-five goddamn minutes, with maybe three four-second pauses for her to get literally two words in, and you guys shoulda seen her face. This sort of frozen smile, like "Oh my GOD you are even more boring than you are in the teachers' lounge! How long do I have to stay here before I can politely call it a night and bail the fuck out, go over to Maddie's and get shitty with her and Shirl and Edie on chardonnay? Jesus H. SHATNER!"

Meanwhile, he's blaring away, all "And so I filled out alllll the paperwork for the Kaiser grant and we put on the show -- not the show sponsored by the Kaiser grant, the other one -- and yada yada yada I feel no responsibility to bring this girl forward yet, she's only a sophomore and there are several juniors and seniors who can take the responsibility yada yada yada and see I'd already done the application for the grant but there was this other paperwork for yada yada other thing and these seven kids -- no, six -- no eight, let me see, there was Tyler, and Amanda, and Jordan and yada yada yada so we got to the place and there was no one there to direct us where to put our stuff so we just established camp in the corner of the main room and HA HA HA [inappropriately-placed laughter] I tell you, we had been there since 7:15 -- no, it was more like 7:10, because we were waiting for the guy with the thing for 45 -- no, 50 minutes, maybe 55, no, more like 50 I'm pretty sure and yada yada something else yada yada infinity the grant application process, whooo!"

I wanted to go over there and tell her she didn't have to put up with this, there ARE better men in the world and some of them even let you talk sometimes, but I decided that even if she felt SHE had to put up with it, at least*I* didn't, so I gathered up my baby, made like a tree, and got outta there.