Dating Fail #5

Elise had been on a couple of dates with this guy before, and they’d gone decently. They were ok and there were no fireworks, but there was nothing to make her run screaming for the exit, either.

So, when the guy (we’ll call him the linebacker, as he had apparently played football in his college days) asked her out for a third date, she agreed. He said he’d like to cook her dinner—and he planned to wow her with his signature dish: Super Special Mac and Cheese. She was intrigued. Now, Elise loves macaroni and cheese as much as the next person, so she was looking forward to the awesome dish he said he was making.

While he cooked, he offered her some wine. He uncorked a bottle and poured her a glass. But this wasn’t your usual stemware—it was a massive, thick-glass goblet. It weighed enough to double as a lethal weapon. She was worried that, between the sheer weight of the glass and the thick rims, she’d wind up spilling red wine all over the floor.

Wondering why he had stemware of steel, she asked what had informed the decision to buy these particular goblets. “I don’t know my own strength,” he said.

As in, “I regularly shatter wine glasses with my bare hands.”

Good Lord, she thought. What is this? The Incredible Hulk: Food Network Edition?

As she let this sink in, she saw what he was cooking. It turned out that, in fact, the Super Special Mac and Cheese was a box of Kraft with ground beef and mushrooms. He slopped some onto a plate and set it in front of her.

This would be an appropriate time to mention what Elise does for a living: she’s a professional chef.

Opting to tough it out instead of reminding him that, while some people cook for fun, she cooks for her career, she started to eat. He asked her if she’d like some ketchup. She politely declined. He, however, Heinzed it up. After covering his mountain of food with ketchup, he proceeded to shovel it into his mouth, Cro-Magnon style. It was straight out of the caveman days. Food flew all over the place, and his face was inches from the plate as he gripped a fork in his fist and operated the culinary equivalent of a backhoe. To hearken back to the Neanderthal metaphor, you’d think that with motor skills like he clearly demonstrated, he’d have been able to hunt woolly mammoths back in the day—but only woolly mammoths. Any other target would’ve been too small.

Elise was, more than anything, relieved they hadn’t gone to dinner in public. After her evening with the linebacker, she promptly added “ability to properly hold utensils” to her list of must-haves in a date.