When I got back I needed to catch up with my more local girlfriends.
The night I came home I set up a movie date with the most proximal
girlfriend and we went to see Time Cop at
the dollar theater. Time Cop was a Jean-Claude Van
Damme movie that would need some serious reworking to be gawdaffle.
We went to the show and to a park to feed ducks and it was nice to be
in a place that cooled off after dark. That weekend I set up a date
with my medium distance girl to comedown and go rock climbing with
me. She wanted to bring her friend who had gone out with us before
and I reset her up with the previous blind date guy. She came down
that Saturday morning and the four of us headed up the canyon near my
house to one of my regular rock climbing spots. One of my friends who
knew we were coming up to that spot but had not been specifically
invited was up there already sitting on a ledge about ten feet off
the ground playing his harmonica. He jumped down talked with us a for
a bit and then headed off. I felt bad he had been excluded but this
was kind of a double date thing and a fifth wheel just makes everyone
uncomfortable. We had the pretty standard day of rock climbing for
those who have never gone before. I go up first and show them how
good I am at it and then they all try in turn and see how hard it is
so they are even more impressed by my god like skill. Then we went up
to a little spot across the river and had a picnic. I took my girl up
a steep trail that lead to a little flat spot in a shallow cave that
was perfect for the romance. I had previously brought up a radio
fully loaded with batteries and a mix tape with all of the best-est
slow jams that could be recorded off of my cd collection. I set up
the mix tape to play for two songs and then get to 'Wonderful
Tonight' by Eric Clapton and then my plan was to ask her to dance
with me. If you are not familiar with 'Wonderful Tonight' then you
have not ever experienced the pure uncontainable power of romance that
can be packed into three minutes and forty-five seconds. She was a
little confused about why I wanted to dance instead of just cuddle
but that was my romantic plan so we went with that. Oh, this next bit
is so cringe worthily cheesy that I am having a struggle to write it
because of the shame of it to this very day. Once more into the
breach, I guess. My plan had been to dance with her in that
romantacular spot and then when he got to the part of the song where
he sings;
“. . .And the wonder of it all
Is that you just don't realize
How much I love you.”
I was going to simultaneously whisper that into her ear. Which I did.
She liked me okay but I think that this was a little much for her and
instead of melting she stiffened a little and the mood got measurably
awkward. We stopped dancing and sat down with her keeping a little
more distance then I had hoped and after about another twenty minutes
she decided it was probably time for her to go. We hiked down and
rejoined the now less bind daters and went back down the canyon. She
headed home and we wrote several letters and talked on the phone some
but we never went on another date. I am romance's fool. We tried to
go out one more time but she got in a car wreck on the way over and I
had to call off the date to go see her in the hospital. Some girls
will go to extremes to get out of a date. Besides that school had
started and there was no real free time to run up to Ogden to date a
girl. We never saw each other again.
