As I quickly approach my 45^th birthday, I feel an overwhelming sense of angst and anxiety surrounding my life.  As I started to think about my next blog post, I wasn’t sure what to write.  This past weekend provided some potentially interesting content – but it will have to be delicately crafted – thus it must wait for another time.  So – I have decided to resurrect something ”from the vault”.

I had been in Charlotte about year, and decided to test the dating waters in the south.  I was scared to try on-line dating, and wasn’t sure that meeting someone “organically” was going to happen.  While I was on an airplane – I saw an ad for “It’s Just Lunch”.  Seeing as I am in marketing, I should know that the art of “casting a wide net” advertising to target a specific niche is not a very solid strategy.  However – I was caught up in the “gimmick” of the whole thing and decided to explore it.

The way the process works is this:  after a very detailed interview, you get paired with someone they feel you are compatible with, and then you meet at a mutually agreed upon location.  The date is to be Dutch, unless one of the parties chooses to pay for the entire bill.  If you are interested, you exchange business cards, and if not, you don’t.  In this format, there is no way of being contacted without the service intervening.

Sounds easy enough.  So – I paid my money and decided to give it the old college try.  My first date was a bust.  Not because he wasn’t a nice man………he was.  However – we were on polar opposite ends of the spectrum with what we were looking for in a relationship.  When I asked the service if they need me to be more specific regarding my “parameters’, I was assured that the next one would be better.  I was told that he was tall, blonde, All- American, successful, fit, etc.  Sounds perfect, right??  Well hardly, so now I have a hilarious story that will stand the test of time.

I head to the restaurant for our lunch date at 1:00 pm.  I was the first to arrive, so I sat at the bar to watch some football.  About three minutes later I hear a voice behind me say, “Are you Evie?”  I turned around and almost said “Oh HELL no?”  However – my sweet, charming newly minted southern self wouldn’t allow that.  What I saw standing in front on me was far from what they described.  The hair he had left on his head was not blonde, but grey.  His polyester shirt gently grazed his burgeoning beer belly, and when he smiled, I noticed he did have all of his teeth, but one of them was black and dead…..lovely!

We sat down to order, and I chose the fastest easiest thing on the menu.  We started to talk about the routine “get to know you things”, and he said that his name was Randy, he was an engineer for Duke Energy, and he had a 12 year old daughter.  I asked him about his daughter, and she seemed to be completely normal.  Cute, smart, close to both parents, etc.  Then he told me that she was working on a history project, and she was doing in on Hitler.  Yep – good ole’ Adolph.  I asked if she was doing her history project on Hitler because is was a terrible, awful dictator who lead the charge to exterminate 6 million Jews, and she simply wanted to use this as a platform to educate her generation of how deplorable he was.  To my dismay, he said, “no, she thinks he is cool.”  COOL??  There is absolutely nothing cool about Hitler.  There I was, a little Jewish girl sitting across the table from a bald, fat Nazi supporter.  Dear lord!!

The waiter came and asked if we needed anything else.  I quickly said no, and asked for our checks.  Yes – two separate forms of payment.  There was no way I wanted him to think that he would pay the check and get to ask me out again.  Oh HELLZ no.  While we were waiting for the bills to arrive, he handed me his Duke Energy business card.  I did not offer mine.  Easy enough – I thought this otherwise perfectly terrible date was almost over. But wait, there is more.  He then reaches into his pocket and pulls out another “business card”.  It was a yellow piece of construction paper with purple writing.  You know, the kind of business card we used to make on our own printer with the little grid lines you used to cut them out??  It had a picture of a rocket on one side, and a UFO with a little waving Martian inside on the other.  In the bottom it said: Randy Kerr……Sponsor – UFO Rocket Club (photo attached.) Seriously??  I am on a date with a Nazi loving, UFO enthusiast!!   I was convinced I was being punked.   I waited for the cameras and Ashton Kutcher to jump out of the kitchen, but they didn’t.  Sadly, this was for real.

We paid our tab, and since I didn’t extend my business card, I never heard from him again.  As I drove home, I called my mom in tears.  Some were out of complete despair that it could not get any worse (trust me, it has), and some because the story was so insanely unbelievable.  As I hit the remote to open my garage, and hung up with my mom, I noticed the clock…..it was 1:45.  Yes, on that sunny Saturday afternoon in Charlotte, I was jettisoned to the moon and back in a mere 45 minutes.  People always tell me that God has a plan.  I still don’t know what it is, but I am quite sure it is meant to happen here, on planet  earth.

Cynically Optimistic………