The Agony and the Ecstasy--
Of first dates
But before we get to that, tomorrow at 12:00 p.m. ET and again at 12:45 ET we are having our first ever Italian Lesson Knitting Group via Zoom for paid subscribers to Backstory Serial. We can’t wait! Screenshots to come.
It may have been awhile or it may have been last night, but most of us have been on a first date or two. Some (perhaps most) we’d rather forget, but others we never will. What is the most fun—or unintentionally funniest—first date you’ve ever been on? And were cobblestones or cows involved?
My first date wasn’t a date at all. My actual date failed to arrive. So, I was minding my own business, waiting for an appropriate time to quietly leave. A person backed into me, full throttle, with a wedge of birthday cake. That was 21 years ago and cake is still part of our life together. Life continues to be full of surprises.
Mine was in the never-will-forget category. It was not only a first but also a blind, long-distance date. No cows or cobblestones, just Hollerith computer cards. My roommate, with whom I shared an apartment in Pittsburgh, PA, was dating a mutual friend who was in an MA program in Virginia. One weekend when she planned to drive to Richmond to see him, she talked me into going along for a date with a friend of our friend, a fellow graduate student. His research required him to load data to the campus mainframe by punching Hollerith cards (it was 1966!). I spent the weekend on this blind, first date – for which I had traveled nearly 6 hours and nearly 350 miles – punching my date’s data into the stack of cards; it seemed like hundreds of them! I was under no illusion of what life was going to be like with this man. Jerry and I will be married 55 years this September. :-)