Journey to the Past

It has been well documented on this site how horrible I am at dating. I have absolutely no luck with men and sometimes this reminds me of how I've gotten myself into some odd situations.

This is another story about a "date" that I went on. Leave it up to Beth to pick up random strangers.

In May of 1997, I was driving home from spending time with Harry (aka The Jerk). We were not defined as a couple yet and the definition seemed as if it would never happen. It was late, but I didn't need to be home quite yet. As I was driving home, a car pulled up next to me at a light.

The young man driving the car was fairly attractive (at least I think he was, I don't really remember, I probably wouldn't be able to identify him if I ran into him on the street). He kept looking over at me. The light turned green and we both started again on the highway. At the next light, he kept looking at me.

We did this stupid little "car flirting" at each light. He paced me on the highway.

I look back on this night as an idiotic moment in my life and I'm so glad nothing bad happened. God, I was stupid!

I pulled over and he stopped. He said, "Want to go get some food?" Figuring two things: 1) a restaurant would have lots of people so I'd be safe and 2) he can't follow me home then, I said yes and we went to Denny's. We park our cars and walk in. There are three tables in the place with people I go to high school with, so it was awkward.

It was the point when we sat down that I realized he couldn't speak any English. Well, he spoke very limited English.

That's right folks, I picked up a guy while DRIVING and managed to get one that I couldn't communicate with.

I don't remember the guy's name. I know he was from Bosnia. He asked for my number and I played it safe and gave him my pager number, thinking he'd never call it. There was absolutely no spark in the interaction.

I ate my mozzarella sticks as quickly as possible and went home.

I didn't hear from this guy for five months. By the time he paged, I was in college and on a field trip with my architecture class. My pager started going off constantly. He paged me 7 times in a row with a number I didn't recognize. He was putting the 911 code in the pages.

After class, I went back to the dorm and called the number, curious as to who the heck had been paging me repeatedly.

I asked, "Who is this?"

He said, "I so-and-so." He did give a name, but again, I can't remember it.

I said, "I don't know you."

Him: But we eat food. I sorry I made to go away but now I back in America. We go again?

Me: I don't remember you. Please don't call me again.

That was the end of my random stranger. Looking back, I feel a little bad about not wanting to go out with him again, but I didn't really know him anyway. And I learned to never pick a guy up in my car. It's just so odd. And un-Beth-like.

2 Comments:

At 10:07 AM, The Lioness said...

You DO know how to pick them, eh? (BTW, my URL has a hyphen instead of an underscore now.)

At 1:03 PM, Firebear said...

I once meet a girl when I was out on a walk, and she hit me with her car. Didn't last long, every time I saw her my leg hurt.