At Least I Got To Hit Some Balls

The notorious tale of Professor Hickey will have to wait for another evening as I have just returned from what is one of the best worst dates I’ve survived. I received an introductory email from Glen* last week. It was a longer email than most guys send, filled with questions about me and my interests, and ending with a request to meet up in “real life.” He wrote that he would like to walk around the Smithsonian with me to check out some of the exhibits or maybe go to a driving range since I like golf; something so that we could chat some more and get to know each other. He also wrote that if I wanted, we could exchange emails back and forth for a while, chat on the phone, and then finally meet in person but that since meeting in person was the only way to see if we really had chemistry, we might as well cut to the chase and meet up.

I have received similar requests in the past and have chosen to go the less direct, more traditional route. This time I decided I would do things differently. Walking around the Smithsonian could take a while though and was not as convenient so I agreed to the driving range. It seemed like a fun way to get to know him and even if it didn’t get to work, at least I would get to hit a bucket of balls.

I must point out that at that point in time, I knew very little about Glen.* I knew that he was a former Marine, self-employed, enjoyed the outdoors, and lived in Annapolis. There were pictures of him hiking and hanging out with friends. I also knew that he had taken the time to at least glance at my profile since he suggested the driving range because in my profile it said that I had taken golf lessons. That may seem like a small thing but not all the guys that have tried to chat me up have even read my profile all the way through.

We weren’t off to a great start when Glen* texted to say he would be a few minutes late. Even though I got there early I wasn’t too annoyed at first as I decided I could get some more practice before completely embarrassing myself in front of him with my lack of skills. However, things got worse before they even really began as he ended up being 30 minutes late. Not because he worked late but because he got lost. He got lost because he refused to look up directions before coming – he just figured he would find it out on his own. He told me that people rely too heavily on things like maps and the internet when they should be more self-sufficient. Then he laughed a little too loudly, a little too strangely.

Shaking it off I decided I was getting ahead of myself and trying to find things wrong with him before I even took the time to get to know him. So we settled into a somewhat comfortable silence as we both started taking some swings. The rest is all a blur of semi-enraged, rambling, vitriolic monologues by him while I became more and more afraid for my personal safety.

First Glen* started on a rant about reality TV. I’m not sure how we got there but I think it began with him talking about how selfish people are as of the last 10-15 years and how no one helps each other anymore. Glen* blames reality TV for this breakdown of society. I said early on that I really didn’t understand what he was talking about as I’m not a big fan of reality TV and I can’t see a link between the popularity of reality TV and a decline of altruism. He then asserted rather loudly that “A whore is still a whore. It doesn’t matter if she’s on tv. It’s still wrong.” I asked him to repeat that a few times as I wasn’t sure how he had come up with that statement and at first, as he was virtually yelling at me while saying this, it seemed like he was calling me a whore or blaming me for all the whores on tv. It had something to do with him not being able to go to a grocery store without seeing something on the Kardashians, a group who I have to be honest I’m still not sure why they’re famous and why I should care about what they do.

This first rant went on for a few minutes and was alarming more because it happened only 10 minutes after he arrived.

Next up on his list of pet peeves, Glen* began a tirade on the federal government that would last for the rest of the date. Now it's generally accepted that it's a severely bad idea to talk about politics in general on a first date. That is especially true when your beliefs are of the extreme variety, you're at a public place where loud conversations are not encouraged, and you cannot speak about politics and the government without working yourself into a foaming rage. Glen* believes that the federal government should be struck down. He said that there was nothing remotely redeeming about it and that we lived in an Orwellian nation with no rights and no responsibilities and he was sick of it. Glen* reminded me a little bit of the crazies that would call the office when I worked as an intern for a congressman while I was in college. I had a few crazies who called the office whenever I was scheduled to work, to tell me that they had built tin foil hats to prevent the government from listening to their thoughts and if I would send them my head measurements, they would build one for me too. Most of these guys seemed fairly harmless though – I had one who after we talked about his tin foil hats, he would recite me some patriotic poems he had written. Ok, so he was wacky and so were the others. But they were on the phone and didn’t have any of my personal information so they seemed relatively harmless.

Here I have to point out that Glen* was a physically intimidating person – a tall guy who works with his hands as a landscaper and general handyman – and the more inflamed he became during his vitriolic speeches, I actually began to get a little frightened. Thankfully we were in a public place and I did have my golf clubs close at hand, but still.

Next up on his list of things wrong with the world: seat belts. He’s against seat belts and feels strongly that there should be no laws requiring them. How dare a policeman pull him over and make him pay money for not wearing something that a government who’s authority he did not recognize order that he wear! This somehow turned into a 5 minute rant about the evils of Blackwater and Haliburton and the defense industrial complex in general. Apparently these evil contractors had stolen the only opportunities that “stupid Americans” had to get paying jobs to take care of themselves: the role of army cooks. Yes, Glen* morphed his rant on seat belts to one against contractors to a spittle-laden speech about how much trays of food cost in the army.

Then we were on to his obsession with the concept of survival of the fittest. This came up when an idiot on the other side of the range walked onto the grass to retrieve several of the balls that hadn’t gone far. I pointed the guy out to Glen* and asked him to hold up until the guy moved. Glen* tried to take a swing as he said it would teach the guy a lesson. Apparently a lot of idiots needed to be taught a lesson and if I would stop espousing the general “coddling and caretaking of society” then we could “weed out all the idiots who were ruining the gene pool.”

I don’t know at what point I changed from fear to anger but toward the end of the date I started getting really ticked. I had far too many bad dates to put up with this shmuckatelly for much longer. He had got in my face and ordered me to explain my opinions, defend myself as to why I thought his view of society was not what our forefathers had intended, and answer if I thought that everyone should be given a home and a car and everything they need while sitting on their butts waiting to collect welfare.

I didn’t rise to the bait. Not because I was afraid of what he would do if he got an angrier. But because I was too fed up to even waste my breath on this guy. Instead, I picked up my driver and took a swing at the ball, imagining I was hitting a different ball entirely.

Today I learned that I play better angry. Not when I’m angry at myself for missing the ball or for doing something wrong or playing poorly. But when I’m angry for someone wasting my time, attempting to blow out my small flicker of remaining hope that there is a funny, kind, unique guy out there waiting for me who is not stone cold crazy – that’s when I can really haul off and knock the stuffing out of that ball.

Amazingly, or not perhaps given my history, Glen* said that he had fun and that he’d like to go out again. I put down my club (but kept it close at hand), took my sunglasses off, looked him in the eye and said that while I respected his right to believe whatever he wanted and to express those beliefs, I didn’t want to listen to him anymore and that his beliefs, personality, interests, and pretty much everything were anathema to me. I told him that I was leaving but hoped that he enjoyed the rest of his evening and I may have even wished him good luck with his future matches, while under my breath I wished all his future matches better luck.

*Name has been changed