Tales from the Trenches: The Handicapped-Hater
Sometimes the craziest stories are the truth. This happens to be one of those stories.
Back in October, when I was still on the market (I was talking with my geek boy, but we hadn’t met yet), I went on a date with what seemed to be a normal person. The guy, let’s call him… John… we had some decent conversations over IMs. His profile was good, he seemed intelligent, had a good career, no red flags.
It went downhill from the moment I saw him. To start off, he was much fuglier and balder than his pictures. (Guys, please, you’re just wasting time and money when you put up pictures from 5-10 years ago!) Within seconds of seeing him, I was thinking “At least it’s just coffee…”
We got our drinks, sat down and made small talk. He said I was beautiful. I couldn’t say the same for him. I thought I could overlook him being shorter than me, but the newly apparent fugliness plus the shortness was just not working.
One thing that is a dealbreaker for me is children. I don’t want any. It’s not that I don’t like kids, but I have 114 teenagers from 6:45 am until 3:30 pm. I love my kids to death, but I don’t need more children when I’m off work, y’know? He shared the same feelings, although his went off the deep end into hatred of all young people.
Then, this little gem escaped his lips…
“Y’know, I probably shouldn’t say this,
but I really hate handicapped people.”
Yes, he actually said that. He hates the handicapped. Now, I can understand hating racists, rude people, the willingly ignorant… but the handicapped have no choice in the matter. You choose to be racist. You choose to be willingly ignorant. You don’t choose to be an amputee.
I was doing my best not to either crack up laughing or hit him. He went on to say how he’s all scared that if he breathes the same air as them that he’s going to develop some sort of disease or something.
Figuring that this story could only get better, I asked him if he ever eats at the Mexican restaurant down by his work. He said yes, and I asked him if he’d ever seen the one-armed waiter. (The one-armed waiter is totally awesome. He beats the snot out of any two-armed waiters I’ve ever had… I’ll refrain from the obvious “with one hand tied behind his back” joke.)
His eyes widened. “I won’t eat there if he’s my waiter. I can’t eat if he’s my waiter.”
Yes sir, he’s going to catch a case of amputee if he eats a quesadilla served to him by a one-armed man.
I managed to do the “it’s late, I should get home” bit, gave “John” a quick hug (backing away quickly to avoid anything he might try to pull in terms of “moves”) and said “talk to you later” which I hoped would end up being me coming up with some inspired reason why I could never see him again without damaging his obviously fragile psyche.
I went home, blogged about it in my LiveJournal, and asked my friends for advice.
My friend B, who works in HR, suggested the following:
“Thank you for your interest in this position. While we were impressed with your qualifications and the way you presented yourself in the interview, we feel that we have identified the candidates we wish to take to the next steps in our recruitment process.”
My friend T said to try this:
“Just tell him you can’t meet him for coffee today because you have an appointment to get your prosthetic leg re-adjusted. “
But it was my ex who came up with the brilliant plan that I eventually used. You see, his brother just got married… and his sister-in-law looks like she could be my older, fatter sister. My ex’s dad is blind - seeing eye dog and all! - and his step-mom is in a wheelchair. There is a wedding picture with all four of them (five including the dog!) that my ex just happened to have scanned.
Since I didn’t mention much about family to “John”, it was the perfect story. I wrote him the following email and attached the photograph:
Hi John,
Thank you for coffee last night. Attached please find a picture I took of my family at my sister’s wedding. I hope you can understand why a relationship between us would not work out.
Have a good Sunday,
e.
He actually replied:
no worries! But I had a good time with you. Thank you so much for coming out. I mean - out with me… not “coming out”. You’re beautiful and you’ve got nice toes (that’s not a fetish… I mean, they are all proportional. The 2nd toe is not bigger than the big toe - you don’t have “talons” like Paris Hilton). Yeah, I don’t know where my amputee / wheelchair issue came from. Certainly not a trauma. Actually, I think know where it came from…. highschool. The man with one finger serving me macaroni and cheese. I guess it just got stuck in the brain and then branched out. Oh well.
Take care
-joh… ps… let me know if you want resident evil 4 for the wii ( for free)… seriously. I mean, I can mail it or whatever. It’s just taking up precious space.
Hey, at least I’m beautiful and have nice toes. (No, I didn’t take him up on the offer of a free Wii game. I just wouldn’t have felt right about that.)
Anybody else got a crazy dating story they’d like to share?
(P.S. My ex’s family knows about this and thinks it is hilarious.)
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My friend and DM met a gal on eharmony for a date. Apparently they’d been talking a lot, and he felt that there might have been a connection. When they meet face to face. She tries to get him involved in this pyramid scheme and asks if they can just be friends. My DM gets pissed, rightfully so, and cuts all ties with her on eharmony.
I’ve only been on one single date, and that was last fall. I met this girl in my journalism class, and we talked about music and she was familiar with a fair amount of the groups I liked. So I asked her to go see Elvis Costello and Bob Dylan with me. She said yes and suggested going out to dinner. She called it a date. She was late, so I missed half of Costello’s set, but I at least got to hear Alison and Radio Radio. Walking back from the concert, we started talking about Halloween costumes. I said I was going as Michael Moore. She said she was going as Audrey Hepburn. So I said that Breakfast At Tiffany’s was one of my favorite films, a true statement I might add. So then she asks me if I’m gay or bisexual, a question that seemingly comes out of left field. I tell her that I’m neither. Then she tells me that the only other guy she knew who liked that movie was gay. Then I walk her back to her dorm, she ignores me to talk to and hang out with a bunch of other guys. So I’m feeling like crap after that, and really disappointed that my first date was so lousy. So I just stopped talking to her, unless I had to.
Worst first date ever.
A childhood friend got in touch with my brother and then started trying to ask him for money or get him “invested” in some sort of scheme too. I dunno what’s with people these days!
Y’know, the gay comment was kinda funny. There was a guy on Dr. Phil today (shoot me! guilty pleasure! It’s like a train wreck!), and he was married to this lady and had two kids and everything and turned out he was gay all along. Crazy stuff.
Ha ha, yeah it was pretty funny, but up until then I thought things had gone well and that maybe she liked me. Bam! I hit a brick wall, fail a fort save, or what have you. One good outcome of the concert; it made me really like Costello. Previously I’d purchased The Best of Elvis Costello: The First 10 Years. Afterwards I bought his first four albums all of which I love. Especially This Year’s Model, which I play on particularly crummy Saturday nights.
I can understand watching Dr. Phil. I sort of enjoy his voice in a weird way. Sometimes I watch Jerry Springer, just so I can feel better about how my life is going.
Strangest date story is a toss up between the first date with my wife, or the last date I went on before I met her.
The last pre-wife date was in Germany with a girl in my company. She had been in country for a few months, and I had a few weeks left before being sent back stateside. We went out to a move on post then ended up downtown at a wine fest. Walked around for a little while and went to a bar in the town’s old castle. Grabbed a few drinks, sat down at a table, and noticed that the guys were dancing with the guys, and girls with girls. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but it’s not what we were expecting.
First date with my (now) wife was a few months later when I was stationed in Maryland. We met online, talked for a little while, and decided to meet up one night. She gave me directions to a mall in a town between our two locations, we were supposed to meet at the movies. I get there early, found the mall, and started walking around to find the movies that ended up not existing. I walked around looking for this girl till the mall closed and I was kicked out by security right around the time I was supposed to meet up with her. I decided to drive around the mall a few times hoping to see someone that matched her description, but didn’t have any luck so I decied to head home. Right about that time someone in a little car started to tailgate me around the place. Well I’d had it, drove across the state of Maryland just to be stood up, kicked out of the mall because it closed, and now some knucklehead was tailgating me? I stopped my truck, jumped out ready to tear into someone, and met my future wife. She didn’t know about the movies, and had just happened to see my truck and followed me (Tennessee tags kinda stick out in Maryland) figuring it had to be me, beacuse just how many guys in trucks from Tennessee would be at this mall?
We ended up sitting in a taco bell parking lot eating tacos for our first date, that was ten years ago and we have been married for seven of them.
With dating stories it’s no wonder that I setteled down huh?