A Date to Remember

It’s time for Mama Kat’s and her writer’s workshop again. This week I chose prompt #3) A memorable date.. It didn’t specify good or bad, so… here goes.

Long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away, which means before I met and married my husband I had many first dates and many memorable first dates. The most memorable, unfortunately for me, were usually the bad ones. Fortunately for me those were usually ONLY dates with those specific gentlemen.

This particular date I’m thinking about wasn’t even with the guy who told me he loved me and asked me to marry him on the first date. Yeah, if you ever have one of those…..RUN….as fast as you can for the nearest exit. Or it wasn’t even with the guy who ordered white rose’ wine in an effort to impress me with his vast knowledge of wine. That was actually a really nice guy. He was just shy and trying to make a good impression. Those were memorable and amusing, now.

For a short time I lived in Fayetteville, NC. I had moved there to help a friend who had lost her husband not too very long before and I felt she needed someone there with her and I needed a change of pace so I quit my job and moved to Fayetteville. I had moved into a small one bedroom duplex. There was a shady guy who lived next door who stole cable from me and tried to convince me that the cable company didn’t mind because the cable was for the “whole house”. Yeah, right.

And then there was this guy, I’ll call him Randy, that lived across the street. I believe he did some sort of construction. I can’t even really remember. I do remember he had a nice car that was a stick shift and even though I could drive a stick, I wasn’t proficient at it. He had actually offered to teach me to master that skill but we had not yet progressed our friendship to that point.

I worked full time downtown in the office of a uniform company. I had a boyfriend but we had been arguing and were currently on the outs when one evening Randy came by my apartment and asked if I would go out with him. We decided to go out that Friday night. On Friday night he picked me up and said there was a “club” in Raleigh that he had been just dying to go to. Did I mind if we went to Raleigh? Heck, I didn’t care, especially since I didn’t have to work the next day. So off we head to Raleigh.

Mind you that Raleigh is a good hour drive from Fayetteville. And I don’t know about now, but, there weren’t any “straight shots” there. It was mainly back roads or two lane highways. No four lanes or expressways. So we had a nice long drive to Raleigh and I’m not sure if he just didn’t even think about eating or whether his idea was just to drink or what but we went straight to the club. We danced and we drank and we drank and we danced. Mainly I remember the drinking. I’m not gonna lie…. I was pretty wasted by the time we left the club. And it was after midnight and we had an hour’s drive back to Fayetteville.

Thankfully he decided we should go eat something really quick before our long drive home. Thank goodness because I was having a hard time staying awake or even sitting upright at this point. He took me to a nearby Waffle House (way to impress a girl on the first date!) and we had a quick bite to eat before hitting the road for that long drive back to Fayetteville. I don’t think we had even driven a mile or two when we noticed the flashing blue lights in the rear view mirror. OH GREAT!!! So, we are a hour from home, on a first date and it’s after midnight and we’re both drunk as skunks and we are getting pulled over by the cops!

Truth be known they were probably AT the Waffle House and saw us there drunk as skunks and thought it would be an easy ticket.  Needless to say after the breathalyzer and having him walk (stumble?) the by then wavering line they hauled my date off to jail! Seriously! BUT…. Before they hauled him off, the cop comes up to the passenger window and not even asking what kind of shape I’m in or even if I’d been driving he asks me if I can drive a stick shift. I told him yes and he said “Great! Then follow us to the station.” WTH??? Are you kidding me? I’m drunker than he was! He gets back in his car and I literally crawl over “the hump” to the driver’s seat.  

I’m sitting there and I can’t even figure out how to turn the freaking lights on in his car. Seriously… I have no clue how to turn the lights on. The cop pulls out and notices, I guess, that I’m not pulling out so he pulls back over and comes back and asks me if there’s a problem and I explain to him that this is our first date and I don’t even really know the guy that well and I’ve never driven his car and I don’t even know where the frigging lights are! He shows me where the lights are, turns them on and goes and gets back in his car.

I’m following this cop car with two cops and my date handcuffed in the back seat all the way back to the police station. I’m freaking out because first, I don’t even really know how to drive the freaking stick shift very well when I’m sober, much less drunk and I’m drunk as crap and about halfway there I realize that the bright lights are on and I have NO CLUE how to dim them. I sure didn’t want to make matters worse but I felt like I had no choice but to keep following them.

After we got to the station and they “booked” him they asked if I wanted to post bail for him? I’m sorry. First date… barely know the guy… so…. not just no, but, HELL NO! Besides, even if he was my boyfriend I don’t know how they thought I was going to pay his bail? So, since I didn’t know his family, had no cell phone, (didn’t have them then) and it was the middle of the night, I had no choice but to sit there in the police station until a reasonable hour to call someone the next morning to come and get me. Talk about a tough way to sober up!

As I’m sitting there, that LONG, LONG night, one of the police officers who took my date to the pokey comes through where I’m sitting and asks me why I’m still there. I told him, again, that the guy I was with was a first date, and I really didn’t feel comfortable driving his car, which I could barely drive sober, all the way back to Fayetteville. I didn’t think it safe or prudent. He then suggested that since he and his partner would be getting off their shift in a couple of hours and they just happened to be off the next day, they wouldn’t mind taking me home if I wanted them to. I explained that I lived in Fayetteville not Raleigh and he said he knew that and it wouldn’t be a problem since it wasn’t that far. I graciously agreed and sat there thinking about how there really were some just nice guys left in the world.

The next morning these two nice young police officers came out and got me and drove me all the way back to Fayetteville. But along the way they stopped and got a 12 pack of beer which they consumed on the way to take me home. WTH??? Didn’t they just arrest my date for that? Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! And they drove like mad men. When we finally got to my apartment in one piece I suggested that they might want a pot of coffee to keep them awake on their long drive back. I was really hoping to sober them up. They apparently were really hoping for something else. Maybe “having a pot of coffee” is a euphemism for “Hey, I’ve always wanted to have a 3 way with two cops” and I just wasn’t aware of it? I almost had to call the Fayetteville cops to get the Raleigh ones packing out the door!

Needless to say, that was one of my most memorable “dates”. Do you have a memorable date you’d like to share? Hook on up over at Mama Kat’s and let the rest of us hear about it.