Question of the Day, Sunday the 7th of February, 2021

[Mia6]

Hello and Happy Sunday!

It's getting close to day.

Tell us about your first date ever, or first date with your s.o, or any date(s) that you think was memorable, in a good or bad way.

I had my first date when I was 14. We went to a double feature. The theater was only 2 blocks from my house so we walked
and it was cold. Of course my girlfriends were there as was anyone who was in junior high, ha! We walked home and I asked him in but he declined. My patents had got us pizza. We had a few more dates but I was dating other people but he wasn't. I've always wondered what his life was like. Maybe I should look him up on Linked in.

What about you?

 

[Maria Bayote]

I had my first date at 18 when I was in college. He was a classmate. We went to a movie which was not so romantic ("Full Metal Jacket", a war movie). Then we ate at some fastfood resto. I remember we had burgers and fries and cola.

It was the beginning of my liking to war movies, btw.

That guy was my first love. We broke up after a year, but we had no real closure. After 15 years he contacted me again to say he was sorry, and to tell me that I was the one who got away. (Please don't laugh, I am just being cheesy here).

He was the reason I wrote a hundred poems after we split. It is true when they say, "first loves never die." (sigh)

 

[NY cat man]

I never dated in high school and, since I was in the last few days of my leave, never dated Michele until my discharge, and by then we were already engaged I had no car or driver's license, so an older sister- the one whose wedding brought me home and started the whole chain of events- and her husband took us to a movie- it was Dirty Dingus McGee- and to a restaurant and bar afterwards. When I did get both car and license we dated regularly, but that's a story for another time.

 

[Norachan]

First date with Mr Husband.

I should preface this by saying we met in Japan a few weeks before I was about to leave the country. I went to Australia for 6 months, e-mailed him maybe twice during that period, then once when I got back to Japan. It was kind of a "Hi, I'm back in Japan. Give me a call if you want to hang out anytime" e-mail that I sent to a handful of people I'd known when I was in the country 6 months earlier.

He replied with something like.

"Hey, are you free on the weekend about 2 weeks from now? I'm going to a traditional Japanese festival in my home town. Want to come along and see it?"

I'd been to see a few festivals before, they were usually a riot, so I said yes. I thought the festival would be held either in the city we were in, or in one of the neighboring towns. But no.............

It was the other side of Japan, a three hour bus ride then one hour train ride away. I'd brought a small bag with some cash, lip balm and a sweater in case it got chilly. That was all. We got to his home town mid afternoon, went to his parents house which was being used by a lot of the locals as a changing room/bathroom/place to stash your beer. I met his parents, grand parents, brother, uncles, aunts, dozens of cousins and a few judo wrestlers he used to compete with when he was a teenager. Basically a lot of big, drunk men all dressed up in traditional clothing asking "Hey, who's this white girl?"

Mr H and his brother were also taking part in the festival, so they changed into their "Hapi" then took me for a walk around the town. The festival involves the men of the village carrying a "Mikoshi" from one side of the village to the other, taking it into the river then up the steps to a shrine while another bunch of men try to beat them back. Then they set fire to stuff. Oh, and there is another group that do a dragon dance with flutes and drums that have to be defeated in a kind of dance off.

It was freaking insane!


Here's a video of the warm-up part. This is how it starts off in the afternoon, with the school boys performing the dragon dance. It gradually gets louder, drunker and more raucous as the evening goes on.

I barely spoke any Japanese at that point, but Mr H's mother and grandparents took really good care of me, prepared the nicest room in the house for me to stay over in and even let me borrow a pair of PJs.

So it was a first date that lasted about 36 hours, involved meeting half the people from his home town, a dragon, drums, flutes, a big bonfire and lots of sake.

Beat that!

 

[Mia6]

Beat that!

I don't think anyone can! Sounds like an amazing time. Have you been back for more festivals?

 

[Jem]

When I was young, we never really "dated"...so no interesting stories there. But the first "official" date I had with my now husband is kinda weird...
We decided to go for a walk on the "boardwalk". A long deck that follows the edge of the lake, leading to the beach and then some trails. So we're in the trail part of our walk and we saw a commotion up ahead. Some people were just standing around, but when I looked closer, someone was giving CPR to a man on the edge of the water. I know CPR so we stayed, but hung back just in case our help was needed. Out of the 10 or so people hanging around, most were useless onlookers, freaking out, so if the CPR guy needed any help, he wasn't getting it from anyone there! Just a few moments later we saw the ambulance trying to get to our area. We were at the bottom of a very steep hill filled with trees and other obstacles so it was very difficult for them to get to us. And of course the whole time they are trying to carry all their equipment and gurney down, the dumb onlookers are yelling and complaining they aren't moving fast enough... So they get to the bottom of the cliff/hill, the first one gets to the unconscious man, and the other scans the area. We make eye contact, (the only sane seeming people there) and he calls me and my husband over to keep the gurney stable on the inclined and bumpy surface. They get the guy on and strap him in and then take him back up the hill/cliff to the ambulance.
I feel bad for the guy giving CPR....he worked so hard, but looking at the guy when they put him on the gurney....he was gone. Turns out he had a heart attack while kayaking in the lake and capsized, I doubt anyone could have done anything to save him.
So after that...we kinda just kept walking then went to dinner...of course it was a bit weird, but what were we supposed to do?
I always though to myself if our first date was some sort of omen.....I hope not though, considering I did marry the guy!

 

[Winchester]

I met Rick at a sledding party in the neighborhood. He had just moved in and wanted to see what was going on. He and I just started sledding together and, by the end of the night, I really liked him. I was 12 and he was 16 and had just gotten his drivers license. One of my GFs was spending the weekend with us and she kept talking about how he was so interested in her. And I didn't know what to think. Until the next day, when he walked down to see me. To be fair, he had no idea how old I was. We got married when I was 16 and he was 19. For some reason, it just worked.

 

[strider rose]

hm, well I met Jon online and our dates were video chatting with each other before i moved to michigan back in 2014 lol . those were wild times for me

 

[MonaLyssa33]

I had a first date with a guy where we met at a coffee shop and talked for a while. Our second date (and actually the first time I ever kissed someone) was the day my niece was born, so I at least will always know the exact date I had my first kiss.

 

[neely]

My first date was in junior high, if you even want to call it a date. I can remember the boy's name but honestly can't remember where we went. He gave me his ID bracelet a few weeks later which meant we were going steady. I don't recall who broke up with who but it was a mutual parting of the ways. I didn't date again until high school. I dated some wonderful guys in college but met my husband several months after graduation.

 

[misty8723]

Not my first date with my husband, but it was memorable in that I think meeting him was meant to be. Back then my friends and I used to go to the clubs to hang out, meet guys, etc. On this particular Saturday I was with one friend and we went to our usual spot, but nobody we knew was there. She suggested we try a place her sister went to, so I said okay. It was already getting late when we got there and there were no parking spots. She circled a few times then said she would go around one more time and if there wasn't anything we would leave. Well, just as she was going around, there came a car pulling out. So we went in, sat at a table, and after a bit I saw my (future) husband pretending to look at the juke box but really checking us out. Pretty soon he came and asked me to dance, and then stayed with me the rest of the evening, and my friend had a guy with her by then too. After the club closed, future husband and I stood in the parking lot for a long time just talking and it was so comfortable being with him. Usually I was pretty nervous around guys I just met, but not him. I don't remember our actual first date, but we dated for awhile then broke up and each dated someone else for a few months before we got back together. And have been together ever since, married for 40 years.

 

[maggiedemi]

I didn't really go on official dates. We would just hang out, go out to dinner or drinks, dancing, play darts or foosball.
I never got really serious with anyone. There are only two I can think of that I would want to see again, and I'm friends with both of them again on Facebook.

 

[Norachan]

Sounds like an amazing time. Have you been back for more festivals?

It was. When we moved closer to his home town we used to go there every summer for the festival, but I haven't been for about ten years now. We live way over on the other side of Japan, so we'd have to be gone at least three days if we went back there. And I can't get a cat sitter for this many semi-feral cats.

 

[Elphaba09]

The first paragraph might be a trigger for some. It gets better after that! I promise!

My husband and I have no idea what to count as our first date because we were friends for a while before we started seeing each other. When when we did start seeing each other, we decided to alter the date of when we started dating from when we "officially" started to when we ought to have started. Some of you may know that I am a survivor of domestic violence. My ex-husband delayed our divorce by about five years. My husband, who I will call Horatio, and I became friends towards the end of my marriage before I became disabled. We started dating the first year of my divorce, which was about a year after the ex and I had separated. (Shortly after my ex found out we were dating, he told people that the reason he "accidentally" hurt me was that he found out I was cheating. Then he kidnapped our daughter for eight months.) So, technically, I was still married when I started dating Horatio, but my marriage had been over for a long time by then.

The day we selected as our "dating anniversary" goes back to the day I realized I was in love with him, and almost two years after he had fallen in love with me. Our first technical date was eight months later. Nothing super special. We went to the movies. We did not even hold hands, but we count it as our first date to go along with our chosen dating anniversary.

Our actual first date, however, came a couple of months later and did not start out as a date but ended as one. I was recovering from a second surgery on my leg, and he brought Chinese food. He was across the room on the loveseat, and I was sprawled out on the couch with my leg propped. My son was at his friend's house, and my daughter was in bed. We were watching "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King" and discussing Lacan's concept of the das Ding and Jungian Shadow archetypes. (Have I mentioned that we are 100% dorks?) I had just finished explaining why I think Golem is a type of Jungian vampire when Horatio professed his love for me. He explained that he had been in love with me for almost three years, stating that he knew I only saw him as a friend and that he was okay with that. He said, "I'm not expecting anything from you and hope we can remain friends. I just wanted to say the words to you at least once." He then rambled about not wanting to ruin our friendship and that he does not consider himself in "the friend zone" because that is a sexist concept invented by men who think that female friends owe them a chance at a romantic relationship just because they are "nice guys." That started him on a tangent about the fallacy of the "nice guy" and how most self-proclaimed ones are just jerks in disguise.

It was actually really adorable, especially since I had been in love with him for almost a year by this point. I said, "Do you remember last summer solstice when you picked dandelions for me because I mentioned that I hate when people spray their lawns to kill them? I knew then that I loved you." I then mentioned how I doubted he wanted to be anything more than friends because not only was I disabled and in the midst of horrible divorce and foreclosure, but because I am several years older than he is. He said, "I want to kiss you so badly right now." I struggled to get off the couch and stand so that he could, but he had already rushed across the room. I knew then that I never wanted to kiss anyone else for the rest of my life. A week or so later, there was an impromptu proposal on our second actual date. We were engaged for seven years.

 

[Maria Bayote]

I just envy those who married their first loves.

 

[NY cat man]

I just envy those who married their first loves.

There's nothing to be envious of, really. Sometimes things just work out that way. Prior to our meeting in that bar that night, I hadn't seen Michele in 9 years. She had been a red-headed holy terror at the time, and I told her that if I caught her, I would rip her arm off and beat her over the head with the bloody end of it. Nine years later, she caught me, instead, and this year we will celebrate 49 years of marriage. Like I said, sometimes things just work out that way.

 

[Maria Bayote]

There's nothing to be envious of, really. Sometimes things just work out that way. Prior to our meeting in that bar that night, I hadn't seen Michele in 9 years. She had been a red-headed holy terror at the time, and I told her that if I caught her, I would rip her arm off and beat her over the head with the bloody end of it. Nine years later, she caught me, instead, and this year we will celebrate 49 years of marriage. Like I said, sometimes things just work out that way.

49 years! Wow! COngratulations!!

 

[aliceneko]

I'm 21 and am still waiting for my first date!

 

[NY cat man]

I'm 21 and am still waiting for my first date!

Don't give up hope yet. I was in my 20s and had never been on a date, never had a girlfriend, and was looking at a life as a bachelor. Things changed, lightning struck, and the rest, as they say, is history.

 

[MoochNNoodles]

My first date with DH was nice. He was my one and only actual boyfriend. At the time he was a mutual friend's roommate. I spent a lot of weeks flirting with him trying to get his attention. Finally this one girl sat us down embarassed the heck out of us both because we obviously liked each other. DH was so red he was purple. But he asked me out once she left us alone! We went to Olive Garden and somehow got sat at a table for 2 next to a table with about 10 of his coworkers!! And it turned out I knew one of them too. But there was no epic blushing there. They left us alone. The rest is history. But a few months later I asked DH how long it would have taken him to ask me out if that girl hadn't done that. He said a year. We got engaged in less than a year so I'm grateful she sped things up for me.

My first date was in high school and probably shouldn't qualify as a date. My friend set me up with her uncle... Who was only a couple years older than us and in the Navy. He drove like an imbecile and my friend and her twin were in the back seat. We went to the camp their family attended every summer because my friend wanted to see the guy she was interested in. I spent more time talking with and walking around with my friend. Eventually her twin became one of DH's good friends and a roommate before we got married. We are still friends with him and his DD and mine are friends. I haven't seen the uncle since and I haven't seen the friend in years.