Blind Date and Beer

I am happily married to my third husband. Yep, number three. And I am his third too. We had to kiss a lot of toads to find each other. And all those lessons have made our bond stronger.

This is a little story about a toad that slimed my doorstep, not long after I got rid of husband number two. (I left him after walking into my bedroom and finding him doing the bump and grind with my brother's wife.)

Back to the toad named Todd.

A friend of mine decided that I needed to jump back into the Dating Game. She didn’t want me to become one of those women that brood about men and decides to no longer date. So she set me up with one of her co-workers who had only been married once and had been divorced for about a year.

I thought, heck, why not? Drinks and dinner. I hadn’t gotten all dressed up in a while.

Todd and I met at Red Lobster for Happy Hour. They had a two-drink minimum and an all you can eat buffet. He was nice looking, kind of like John Mellencamp with a beard and glasses. I ordered a Margarita and he ordered a pitcher of Coors. A pitcher! Just for himself!

We filled our tiny little plates and sat down to eat, drink, and talk. It was polite conversation. His work. My work. His cat. My dog. His sister. My brother. Then it moved on to his ex and my ex.

Still not a horrible evening. Neither one of us went on and on about our exes. Just reasonable explanations for splitting up.

My Margarita was empty and his pitcher was too. We went back up to the bar for seconds of food and drinks.

I wasn’t having a bad evening. He seemed to be able to hold his liquor.

After eating a bit more we moved on to the topic of mother-in-laws. It was like the whole evening had been building up to this topic. Orchestrated, somehow. I had said that my mother-in-law was ok and that she made a mean Snickerdoodle cookie and that was all I got to say on the topic.

I spent the next two hours listening to every grading little detail of his overbearing narcissistic mother-in-law. How she had everyone convinced that he was a wife beating, money-grubbing loser. How everyone believed every sweet word that came out of her mouth. He talked so much and with such passionate loathing for this woman that he totally forgot to drink his second pitcher of beer.

And then he just stopped talking. I asked him if he was okay. No answer. He was staring at the door. A couple had just walked in. They were in their mid-40s, early 50s. Well dressed and laughing with the Maitre D'.

Then the woman saw Todd. I watched her as she cocked her head sideways, winked, and threw Todd a kiss. Something snapped.

Todd growled, “It’s her!” He then proceeded to pick up his full pitcher of warm beer, stormed over to the woman, and tossed the entire contents of the pitcher in her face.

He turned around to look apologetically at me and walked out of the restaurant.

The end…

Not quite!

The mother-in-law from hell decided to take her embarrassment and rage out on me. Her husband tried to stop her but it was no use. Drenched in beer and mascara running down her cheeks, she proceeded to tell me what a horrible man Todd was. The whole restaurant was now watching as this woman berated me and lambasted the now absent Todd. Her husband gave up trying to calm her down. The Maitre D' called the manager who then called the bouncer and we were all tossed out on our ears and told never to go back to that restaurant, ever again.

After that, I refused to ever go on another blind date.

#MyWorstDate