This is a subject that I absolutely needed to cover. Looking back on my dating history I never ever had a bad blind date. We have all heard about horror stories surrounding blind dates. It never happened to me. Honestly, I almost looked forward to blind dates because they always seemed to be great.
My first blind date was with a person named Gwen. It was when I was in college. I picked her up and was amazed. She was attractive and vivacious. We had a great time. I took her to a club where some friends of mine were performing. Dave was a trumpet player and Gerry was a base player. They took a break and came over to the table. I immediately introduced them to…. for some reason I couldn’t remember her name. I tried to introduce her to them but it wasn’t happening. She fortunately provided her name. Suffice to say that was our one and only date. I guess it wasn’t meant to be. Even though we had a good time that night.
Move forward to my next blind date. A friend of mine named Mike had set up the date. He was kind of a practical joker so I didn’t know how this might go. I went to pick her up for the date and to my surprise it was this person that worked in the library. I had always thought she was very attractive and I couldn’t believe that when Mary answered the door it was actually the girl from the library. We hit it off immediately. That night we went on one of those hayrides at Eberly Farm. It turned out that she was a great dancer and we went out a number of times after that date and danced. She was great. The only problem was that she had two small children and that was problematic. I wasn’t ready to have an instant family. It turned out that we were not going to have a future but it was fun anyway for a time.
The next one is unbelievable. Someone set up this blind date for me. I go to pick up the girl and go to an address on North Elm Street. There was an attractive girl there but she was waiting for a girl friend of hers not me. She asked if I was at the right house. I said South Elm Street. She pointed out my error and I left and went to the same address on South Elm Street. There was my date. She was beautiful and we had a great night. We also had some additional dates after that. Again, nothing really came of it. I look back on that night and wonder if I should have tried to contact the girl on North Elm…I never did. Imagine two attractive potential dates at two different houses on two different ends of Elm Street…how does that happen.
Fast forward to the greatest blind date ever. I travelled to Northern California the summer after my sophomore year for basic training at Hamilton Air Force Base. I travelled with a friend of mine who was also in the AFROTC program named Pat Maloney. On our first weekend prior to the training, he had his uncle who worked for IBM set us up with dates. There were two girls, Kathy and her friend Barbara when we arrived at his uncle’s house. For some reason I ended up being with Kathy. In many ways it was just chance that it turned out that way. Without spending too much time on the details we fell in love and got married my senior year and I spent the next 53 years with her. It was absolutely the greatest blind date I ever had. She was amazing and no matter how it happened it changed my life for the better forever. I miss her so much, but I was so fortunate that we hooked up and found each other. To me it was an incredible love story and again it came from a blind date.
I don’t know about you. I don’t know if you have ever been on a blind date or that it turned out good or bad. If you have any experiences that you would like to share with me regarding blind dates please do so. Maybe you were lucky, like me, and found the love of your life.
