Okay, I want to start out here by talking about music and food.
People all over the world, of every age and societal strata, love music. But WHAT music they love differs widely from person to person. Anywhere you might happen to go, you will find dominant local musical tastes, but even there, some people like other things. When I was a teenage boy, I developed a love for a certain type of music that no one… and I mean no one… that I knew could stand at all. Not my family. Not my friends. No one.
I liked a lot of kinds of music, as it happened. But my favorite kind wasn’t a type of music many others had heard of, and if they had, they usually would say that would have rather not… ever… heard it.
But, you know, music. We all know what we like, and we (almost) all know that other people may or may not like the same music. It is just one of those things.
The same thing can be said about food. If you were to close your eyes and think, right now, of your favorite meal, I’ll bet you can see it… smell it… even taste it. But it wouldn’t necessarily be a lot of other peoples’ favorite meal. And I’m sure some people would dislike it, if they ever had it. Because that is how human tastes go. Different people like different things.
Now there are certain types of music, and certain foods, that are listened to or eaten more than almost all other types. You know, popular music, popular types of foods like pizza or tacos or burgers or whatever it might be. Even then, not everybody likes these things, although it can seem like it.
I said all that to say this: when I was around 22 years old, a stunningly beautiful new girl showed up at work, working in the office down the hall, and I wanted to meet her. I didn’t really know how, and since I was working (as a civilian) on a military base, I knew the guys would rapidly be swarming around her, so I might never get a chance if I didn’t do something fast. I asked a woman I worked with (who I trusted) how exactly I should approach the problem, and she said, “Go up to her desk. Make sure she’s not busy, if she is, tell her quietly you’ll come back. When she is free to talk, just say, ‘I’m Owen. I have seen you around and would like to get to know you better. Would like to have lunch sometime?’ Lunch is not threatening; and you are being right up front about what you are doing.”
That sounded like a terrible idea to me, but I didn’t have any better ones, so I steeled myself, walked down the hall into the large office she was in, walked up to her desk, and said, “Hi. Do you have a minute?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Owen. Owen Servant.”
“And I’m Tara. Nice to meet you.”
“Yes, I um… work down the hall. I’ve seen you around and would like to get to know you better. Would you like to have lunch sometime?”
“Sure,” she said, getting out a scrap of paper from her middle drawer. She wrote her phone number (and first and last name) on it, and handed it to me. She said, “Saturday lunch might make the most sense.”
“Sounds great,” I said. “I’ll call you. Nice meeting you.”
“You, too.”
I walked back to my office in a daze. I went right back to the woman who had advised me. “She said yes,” I said.
Did she give you a time?
“She said Saturdays might make the most sense.”
“Right,” she said musingly. “If it is a good date, it can keep going; if it is not, there is the rest of the day to forget about it.”
“That’s encouraging,” I said.
“Well, the same is true for you,” she said, laughing.
I called her the next night, and we agreed to meet the following Saturday for lunch at a restaurant out on the water (I lived in Florida at the time). When the day came, I got there first and got us a table outside, she came a little later (but not late) and was dressed casually, but looking amazing. She said she was glad we could sit outside, commented some on the view, and then, after we ordered our food and drinks, we began to talk.
It was the kind of talk you do on a first date with someone you barely know. Where did she grow up? [Talahassee] Siblings? [It turned out I knew her sister] College? [FSU of course] and so on. Then the lamp got turned on me. [Fort Walton Beach; one brother, one sister; University of West Florida]
We kept on talking, probing, slowing down a little when the food came. But I could tell five minutes in.
It turned out, we had … nothing. No chemistry. Nothing in common. Didn’t like the same kind of foods or music or interests or… anything. I could usually find some common ground on a date to make the experience passable. But it was like no two people could have had less spark than we did.
For an hour.
Things I thought were funny she didn’t, and vice-versa.
When the hour waned, and I’d paid the bill, we stood up. I walked her back to her car.
“Well that was fun,” I lied.
“Yes, thank you for lunch,” she didn’t lie.
And that was that. I didn’t ask for a second date, and she certainly gave no indication she would have had any interest if I had. So the feeling was pretty mutual. No harm done.
It was later the next week before the older woman at work who had advised me asked me how it went. So I told her.
“What did you do the rest of the day?”
Made pizza at home and listened to the Metropolitan Opera. “Tosca,” I said. “It was amazing.”
She smiled at me for some reason and walked off.
People like different music, people like different foods. People like different people, too. In many ways, that was the sanest date I ever went on, because it was nice, but we knew really quickly we weren’t really right for each other, and moved on. Which was fine.
Oddly enough, over the fifteen years that followed that date, I was rarely as wise when things weren’t going my way. But that day I was, I think.
