Every experienced online dater and One Date Wonder should have come to terms with one universal truth. Never get excited about a first date. Do not build expectations in either a positive or negative direction. A true One Date Wonder remains comfortably numb about each and every initial encounter to avoid any dashing of hopes and dreams, and ensure only pleasantly positive surprises. Lucky for me, I have learned my lessons well.

The next truth about an experienced One Date Wonder is that we begin to develop an almost uncanny feeling for what might go wrong. For example, mere hours before meeting my Asian Grocery Guy last night I said to a friend of mine “He didn’t tell me how tall he is. I bet he’s a midget.” Dear readers, would this be written if he were a tall gentlemen? No, of course not. He was wee.

Now admittedly, I have a thing for the tall men. But at 5′4″, it is not difficult for a man to be taller than me. I prefer the difference to be significant, but I am a girly girl like that. Pretty much taller than me at all will do. I’m not overly fond of heels anyway. This man might have been an inch taller than me. But he might have been an inch shorter. He was so busy doing the short man swagger through the mall that I really couldn’t tell. It was that distracting. Dude had something to prove and he was trying to prove it by making his coat tails flap about in his wake. Perhaps this was meant to make him seem of greater stature. Perhaps he just likes flapping coat tails. Who knows? The overall result was like some sort of demented tiny super hero. The “Teeny Tiny Superguy” theme was stuck in my head all night.

The truth is, I am somewhat reformed. I was going to overlook the short thing. Even though it caused me a bit of alarm, I was going to try to do it. But there was another problem all together. I’m not sure if it was a date, or I was his platonic movie buddy. He responded to an ad looking for a relationship. I was clear about that. And I did make him ask me out, pick a night, and choose the activity. I helped with meeting place and time, and picked one of his movie choices. All very date-like so far.

But in execution, it became befuddling. We went out to dinner and a movie. At dinner, we chatted and laughed and ate. And then the check came. I went for my purse while he went for his wallet. He did not stop me. We went dutch. That would be the first point of ambivalence. We also bought our own movie tickets. At least by then, I was ready for it. Fast forward to the movie. He chose not to lower the arm rest between us so there was no real divider there. But he also didn’t really lean or touch at all during the movie. Once or twice he grazed me as he gestured, but there was no meaningful contact. Still, the parting is the real indicator, right?

Right. So we left the theater and his swagger accelerated to unholy proportions. He practically raced out of the shopping mall. When we got to the parking lot, I waved my arm to the right and told him I was over there. He waved to the left and said he was over there. He never even stopped his mad swaggering or slowed for a second. Just called over his shoulder that he’d email me and bye! I got to my car completely perplexed. In fact, I still am.

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