TOOLBAG TUESDAY

Did I read the Match.com commercial right when it said one in five relationships start online? Really?? One in five??

That seems high to me, considering all of the horrible stories I’ve heard about meeting someone online.
(I’m sure the remaining four out of five people never see each other again after the first date.)

My friend Ashley had one of the worst first dates I’ve ever heard of with someone she met online.
(Wait, let me clarify…one of the worst first dates that didn’t result in anything traumatic or violent à la Craig’s List killer.)

Alan didn’t violate her, but he was completely unsanitary and odd, and after a horrible picnic in the park, we now refer to him as “mayonaise fingers.”

First of all, Alan looked nothing like his online dating profile picture. He was way older. And he wore a white undershirt and black socks pulled up to his knees, and it was summer.
He was also 20 minutes late and she had to wait for him in the hot sun.

Alan lived in North Carolina and Ashley lived in South Carolina, but there was a big city about an hour-and-a-half between them that had a zoo, and they agreed to meet at the park and then go see the caged animals afterwards.

You’d think that since Alan was the one who suggested they go on a picnic, that he would, you know, KNOW HOW TO PROPERLY PACK A COOLER.

Instead of a nicely-portioned wedge of cheese and crackers, or a fruit plate or, at the very least an unopened bag of chips, Alan asked Ashley to help him haul an industrial-sized cooler out to the park filled with what Ashley described as, “everything that must have been in his fridge.”

And this was not newly purchased food either.

There were half-loaves of bread, two slices of cheese, half-empty containers of mayonnaise, mustard, ketchup, relish and grey-ish meat.

It was ten times too much food for just two people, and it was just very bizarre. Would it kill him to get some Subway sandwiches?
She politely took the two slices of cheese, wondering when he originally purchased it.

She observed Alan make a sandwich and saw that he was trying to open the mayonnaise jar. Perhaps it was sealed shut from neglect and its two-month old expiration date.)

Ashley saw the jar and then noticed that in the unnecessarily large cooler, there were no utensils.
“How are you going to put mayonnaise on your sandwich?” Ashley asked. “You don’t have any knives.”

He smiled ¬– shudder – and then stuck his index finger into the old jar of mayonnaise and smeared it on the bread.

And then he told her that he couldn’t afford the admission to the zoo.

Ashley faked a stomach ache (must have been the cheese) and drove the hour-and-a-half home, disgusted, thinking about the mayonnaise, and his yellowy mayonnaise fingers.

He emailed her soon after saying he could TELL that she wasn’t into him, but if he was wrong, he’d be willing to try a date again.

She never called him again. Or ate condiments again.

Can you imagine how gross his keyboard computer must be?

-Jenny