The Blind Date From Hell

Does anyone read horoscopes?

I usually don't, but I did today. It read,

"Your quick thinking and good memory will save the day. You're everyone's hero."

Pretty generic and that's why I don't read them.

I remember one time I should have paid more attention to my horoscope of the day. I was sitting in the lounge at a department store I worked in many years ago, not bothering anyone, just catching my breath, when a young co-worker came up to me and asked me if I'd like to date her father. O...kay.

Well, I hadn't had a date for awhile and it seems her father hadn't either, so I said what the heck.

Our "date" was to occur that next Saturday night. Keep in mind I've never seen the guy in my whole lifetime.

Friday afternoon, I was upstairs in the lounge and they were reading horoscopes so I asked them to read mine for me. Honest to God, it said, "You are going to go out to dinner soon. Do not sit by the window."

I laughed because that's exactly what I was going to do and scoffed at the "sitting by the window" part because, after all, it was just a horoscope, right?

That night, there was a knock on my door and I knew it was HIM. I opened it and you should have seen my face. It was a genuine kodak moment.

The guy had one leg.

Now, I'm not one-leg prejudiced or anything, but it was that little minute detail my co-worker left out. Nice.

But, this was only the beginning of my blind date from hell.

We planned on going to a seafood restaurant near the inlet (that's the real picture of it on the right) where we could get some fresh crab cakes and shoot the breeze, hoping that we'd find things to talk about, of course. On the way, he casually mentioned that he almost missed our "date" because he had been to the doctor that morning and was in pain. He went on to say that his kidney stones was giving him problems and might give him more pain so be on the watch out. I said, "What do I do? Call an ambulance?"

He said, very calmly, "Oh, no. I just go to the bathroom and pass them."

So this was our conversation on our way to the restaurant.

We get to the restaurant and lo and behold the hostess seats us by the window.

Now, by this time, I'm thinking about the horoscope, but as I don't pay much attention to them, I think I was challenging it. If I sit by the window and nothing happens, then I'll know what I've known all along - that horoscopes don't mean a thing and I was right about them.

We order our crabcakes and the conversation shifts to his ex-wife. I could tell he never got over the fact that they broke up and I was trying to give him sage advice on what to do about the situation.

I had no love interest or any other kind of interest in the guy, so I was holding my breath, thinking please accept this sage advice and go back to her.

It was somewhere in between nodding while he was talking when I heard a scream and all of a sudden, my lap was filled with some kind of strange soup with brocoli in it. Not only did it put a new meaning in the words "hot pants," I was totally mortified when he started dabbing my - er - private parts.

The waitress apologized profusely to us, then to the table whose food she had spilled in my lap and the night couldn't end any faster.

He dropped me off at my house and I didn't even give him a kiss good-night. I never wanted to see him, or that restaurant ever again and that was the last time I ever went back. There are many morals to this story, but two things I vowed to myself I'd do. One, never ever disbelieve horoscopes and never, ever go out on a blind date again.