Dating Can Suck…

From a female reader

After conversing briefly with a gentleman on a dating website, I accepted his invitation to meet for lunch one Saturday.

Fearing for the safety of my children, I make it standard practice to not bring men I haven’t met to my home. So the plan was set for me to meet him in the Albertson’s parking lot and from there we would go to lunch.

As I drove into the parking lot I glanced around the area that I was to meet him and thought to myself “oh, he’s not here yet.”

Ok, maybe this wasn’t fair but I parked very far away from that area so that I could get a peek from a distance, just so I could have a chance to run if things just didn’t look right.

One of my favorite past-times in a crowded place is to people watch so while I was waiting there with nothing else to do, I noticed this little old, unshaven, dirty man sitting in his, I’d say 1980’s rusty old station wagon. He had used parts from other cars (different color cars) to replace the hood and one door that he had apparently picked up from the salvage yard.

My heart went out to him, I felt so sad. The little car was busting at the seams with probably everything he owned.

I watched him as he got out of his car. He went to the back, opened the hatch back and pulled out some of his belongings.

In order to close the door again he gave a couple of big shoves and held tightly to his belongings until the last second, when he quickly moved out of the way and slammed the door shut. I was impressed that he got the door shut without anything falling out. He then happily leaned up against his car and sat as if he was waiting for something or someone.

After this little show, I noticed it was way past the time for my date to show up. I wondered if I got the wrong time or wrong place or if I was just being stood up. He said he would be in a green car and I had not seen any green cars yet…. well, except for the partially green, white, red and rust colored car that the little homeless man had!

No, No No. I heard myself say over and over again. My heart started beating very fast…”Oh my Gosh!” He looked nothing like my dates picture. Was this man my date? My first inclination was to run, I said to myself “get out of here fast… he has not seen you…go!” …But then I heard that voice in my head, that I’ve heard Ohh… so many times, “What would Jesus do?” He wouldn’t drive away and leave someone feeling rejected.

I mustered the courage to drive over and say hi and when I got out of my car he walked up to me and placed a stack of papers in my hand. I looked down at them and they were all coupons to different eating establishments and each offered two free meals. “Pick where you want to go from these places, I won them on the radio.”

I wanted to say that I wasn’t interested but that voice in my head was still nagging at me. “What would Jesus do?”

Before I knew what I was doing I heard myself say… “Ok, I pick this one and I’ll meet you there.” Don’t get me wrong he was a very nice man but through conversation with him I found that he had been homeless for a short time, and he had been using the computer at the library to converse with women over the Internet. Needless, to say I later told him, that we didn’t have a lot in common but thank you for the nice lunch.

dating, relationships, homeless, Jesus, internet, junk cars, courage, restaurants