the mutually exclusive properties of dating

Now I just call him the Cracker Barrel guy.

Our first/only date was to get sushi, which he'd never had because farmers' kids from the Deliverance region don't do sushi. I admire him for trying. I picked the restaurant because he was a self-admitted meat-and-potatoes guy who had recently discovered Cracker Barrel and while we were trying to pick a restaurant said, "You know, it's a pretty nice place!" So it was over before it even started. Jen put it best: "The way I see it, you like grammar and he likes Cracker Barrel, and those things are mutually exclusive."

I brought this one upon myself, though.

Scene: Friday night, favorite Irish pub in Memphis, basically a meat market with a few cougars prowling the perimeter. If it's a Mean Girls jungle scene, we are the sexy cheetahs preening ourselves in the center, unimpressed by the alpha male lions circling, salivating, purring. For some reason, though, my nonchalant game is off tonight. My friends, one with the Arkansas hair poof (it was glorious) and the other with the great rack, they are faring just fine. I obviously decide I don't want to talk to these chatches anyway. Your hair gel makes you look like a porcupine, and your gold chain was a bad QVC purchase.

So I start looking. Forget fate. The guys that would approach me aren't the ones I like anyway. I like the shy ones. The ones who respect your girl's night. The ones who are out with the guys, not out to find me. I'll find you.

I spotted him immediately; well-dressed, good-looking but not hot, slightly overwhelmed by the din. Perfect. Arkansas Poof joked that I should go ask him out. 3 jager bombs later, I'm on it. He's alone now at his table, even better. But I still need a reason to go over there.

Trice the shots, trice the stupidity. I decide - I'll just trip. Yes, like, actually physically fake a fall. Why not? My friends were too preoccupied with Baldy McGee and Nitro to stave me off from my ridiculous-meets-desperate-meets-jager plan. Which is: I'll walk right by his table (on an unnecessary trip to the bathroom) and "accidentally" trip over someone standing next to the table....it's perfect. He can laugh at me, I can give an embarrassed giggle, insert a self-depricating joke, and boom we'll be talking.

As I'm crossing the packed bar, suddenly his tableside crowd disappears, like f-ing Moses is there to part the Red Sea, leaving a totally blank canvas for me to look like a complete ass. I realize, I don't even know how to fake trip. I don't do physical comedy...what the hell was I thinking? At this rate I might actually trip. Oh God I'm too close now...shit, when did his friend sit back down at the table?

It's over. I do a half-hearted stumble but am so embarrassed by the execution that I walk right past him to the bathroom. Shame on me. Shame on my stupid plan. Shame on not giving myself another hour of Blue Moon before deciding this was the best option.

In a totally anti-climactic turn of events, when I retrace my steps back to my poof+titty posse, his friend is gone. Farmer boy is alone. I regain enough composure to say something witty...conversation opened, invitation to sit down. Two hours later his friends are leaving, but I've got a date for Friday night.

Damn I'm good.

(Note: This was, appropriately, the worst date I've ever been on in my entire life.)