Aug 04 2007
Dumped
Thanks, all, for your thoughts and prayers for my Fuzzles. After 21 hours in the hospital, he’s home now and doing fine. More on that later. For now, it’s Soap Opera Sunday!!!
(No button yet–there was an unexpected delay. Otherwise, we’ll proceed as planned! Yay for our first Soap Opera Sunday launch! )
To preface, in the fall of 1996, the internet was still a pretty new thing–as least for me it was. It was my Freshman year at BYU. My dorm had an internet connection in it and my roommates and I were transfixed by this new magical world. Because of the newness, there were certain rules that are now basic common sense but at the time they weren’t quite so obvious. Like meeting strangers in chat rooms and letting them take me out for breakfast…
Okay, the breakfast thing only happened once. And I was lucky–the guy didn’t turn out to be a homicidal sociopath. But he wasn’t exactly Mr. Right either.
I met him in a chat room one night–or was it super early one morning? After “getting to know each other” for a few hours through chatting, we realized that we were only chatting a few blocks away from each other. Did we want to meet? Should we go to breakfast? He knew of a great waffle place in Salt Lake City (an hour away) and he’d come and pick me up from my apartment in a few minutes. Sure, I said! And gave him my phone number and address (cuz, as I said, I was really smart like that).
So, I grabbed my roommate’s sassiest outfit and washed my face and I was ready to go. I sat by the window waiting for him to pull up. As he walked up the path to my door, it looked like he had definite possibilities. But once he got closer, it was clear that he was not nearly hot enough for me not exactly my type. Oh well. I was committed to breakfast with this total stranger and he’d seemed cool enough as we were chatting. So while romantic intentions were completely halted on my part, perhaps I could make a new friend.
So, we made the long drive to Salt Lake and I was… bored. The guy had plenty to say, though nothing very interesting. Blah, blah, blah. There were times when I thought, “um, is he still talking?” But I did notice that we’d been driving around forever. In circles. Finally he announced that he couldn’t find the place he was looking for and how did Denny’s sound. By this point, I was so ready to be done with him that I said yes, whatever. Let’s just eat.
Once inside the grease-infested Denny’s, we ordered and he started… staring… at me. “You’re so pretty.” I thanked him. “No, really, you’re so pretty! I mean, I expected that you’d be nice looking, but I never expected that you’d be so beautiful.” Ewww–the tone of voice. Come on, you know exactly the tone of voice I mean–the kind that makes you feel so icky.
“Thanks,” I said again, feeling utterly creeped out. The way he was staring and talking made me want to hide from him!
Finally, food eaten. Bill paid. Wending our way back down to Provo. All of a sudden, he pulls into the shoulder of the freeway, reclines his seat, and says, “I’m really tired. Mind if I take a nap for a minute?” YES, I minded, but I didn’t say so. I was like, sure, whatever. After a few minutes, though, I thought I was going to die. The little car (not to mention the weirdo reclined in his seat) was making me feel very claustrophobic. I was dying to get home and report to my roommates get back to my life. Finally, I said, “look, I’m sorry, but I really need to get home.” So he sat up, angry with me, and drove me home.
Ahhh, home. I was so glad to get out of that car. I’m sure I said something non-committal like, “hey, yeah, it was fun meeting you, maybe sometime we could hang out again, blah blah blah.” I was never very good at saying things like, “Dude, you’re creepy and you don’t have a prayer with me, so go home now and don’t call me again.”
Anyway, life went on. Every once in a while, he’d call me–not really to ask me out, but to see how I was doing, etc.
One night, I was with Matt at the grocery store (in the middle of the night, natch, and probably doing something bizarre and probably wearing something bizarre, but I don’t remember the details) and we ran into Weird Internet Waffle Guy there. I waved hello and was friendly, but I was on some important mission with Matt, so I didn’t pay much attention to WIWG (as I’m apparently now calling him).
The next day, I get a phone call. “Hi. This is WIWG.”
“Oh, hey, howzit?” I say, already bored with the conversation. hahaha.
“You have some explaining to do.” Oh my gosh, he was so angry. What the crap? “I saw you!!!” he screams out. “I SAW YOU WITH ANOTHER GUY!!!”
Ho. Ly. Crap. He was freaking out. He went on, “So, who is he? What does this mean for us?”
So, I told him, honestly, that Matt was someone that I was very close to who I loved very much and with whom I expected to spend a lot of time. (I conveniently left out that he was gay…)
“Okay, then, that’s it. I NEVER WANT TO SEE YOU AGAIN.” He was dumping me! “You and I are THROUGH!!!” And he hung up on me.
Mmmmm, okay!
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And now, here are links to all our other Soap Opera Sunday participants today!
Wanna play too? If so, please leave your permalink (the link to the actual post) in the comments (or email it to me) and we will update them periodically throughout tonight and tomorrow (Sunday) morning. And please remember that you must link back to Kate and to me in order to play along.
Thanks, everyone, for making our first communal Soap Opera Sunday such a success!!!
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