I dated the Obamacare girl

I dated the Obamacare girl October 28, 2013

 

 

I dated the Obamacare girl.

And why wouldn’t I…she was so optimistic and promising when we first met. Big brown eyes and a warm smile. She even wore those long, dangly earrings – those get me every time. She told me, “If you take me out, you’ll find that I’m more than a date. Much more!”

Wowsers! That’s a hard promise to pass up. So, we went out. Well, sort of. O-girl told me to pick her up, but when I reached her front door I found a note that read, “I can’t go out at our scheduled time, but please keep standing at the door until I’m able.”

An odd way to begin, I thought. But, what could I do? There was no getting out of the date at this point—promises were made. So, I stood on her stoop…for several days. One day, long after the flowers in my hand had wilted, I could hear her shuffling around inside. “Are you there,” I asked. “Is this date going to happen?”

She replied from behind the closed door, “I AM here…and you’re being impatient. Nobody is more frustrated than I am that our date hasn’t begun.” She stomped away from the door, and I went back to waiting.

Finally, when the leaves had changed and the brisk winter air from Canada had moved in, she came to the door, opened it, and our date began. It was awkward from the start. The dialog flowed in one direction as O-girl asked me one personal question after another, writing down my responses with a permanent marker on acid free paper. “I need this information,” she kept insisting. Why, I wondered, I just wanted to get to know her a bit and see what she had to offer.

This one-sided exchange continued throughout dinner, and by the time the waiter cleared our plates O-girl knew everything about me. I knew nothing about her. But the night was young, and I thought, Let’s pay the check, get out of here, and move into the ‘more than a date’ experience O-girl had promised.

Then came the truly awkward moment.

The waiter brought the check and set it on the table in front of me. As I reached for it, curios about how much this evening was going to cost me, O-girl grabbed my hand, shook her head, and said, “No, don’t pay. Just watch.”

“Don’t pay. Just watch.” I’d never heard such a thing. I was stunned, and admittedly, a bit intrigued. I pulled my hand back, looked into her mysteriously confident eyes, and wondered what in the world O-girl had up her sleeve. Could she make money appear from nowhere? Did she have a wealthy uncle in the restaurant that was about to walk over and pick up the check? Was she going to dip into her own purse and foot the bill?

We sat at the table for about an hour, looking at one another, and then down at the check, and then back at one another. I started sweating a bit around my collar. I noticed the restaurant owner watching us, expecting us to pick up the check and pay for his services. When I couldn’t take it any longer, I blurted out, “What exactly do you have planned for that check? What am I ‘watching’ for?”

She looked to the left, and then to the right. She leaned in and whispered, “Ok…on my signal, get up slowly, walk out of the restaurant, and pretend that you’re not doing anything wrong.”

“Dine and dash? Are you kidding me? That’s your plan?” I told her, “We can’t do that.”

She replied, “Yes We Can! See all those young, healthy people waiting in the foyer? They’re about to be seated at this table. They will pay this bill. Just watch…it’ll be great!” And with that, she pushed away from the table, held her head high, and walked out of the restaurant as if she was the hippest, most in-touch-with-the-people patron that restaurant had ever served.

I just let her go. I was done. She could find her own way home. As I slipped my debit card into the plastic sleeve of the waiter’s envelope, I thought, You know, in a backwards sort of way, O-girl was ‘much more’ than a date. She was lesson-learned. After all, I had asked her out—that was my choice. I’d be much more careful in the future.

Or, would I?

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