‘Bama (the Al Kind, Not the O Kind)

Not sure if anyone else is keeping count, but Megs and I occasionally take a mental tally of how many great, good, indifferent, bad, and atrocious dates I go on. With drive times getting longer (how did the west get so big and east get to be so small? Weird proportions, former leaders of America. It’s almost like they got tired of drawing lines) we have exponentially more time in the car than we did before. And Megan pointed out a pattern: about every ten dates is exceptionally good. Maybe one or two out of those ten is reasonably good, and maybe one or two is horrendous, and the remainder are indifferent. That’s a pretty interesting set of ratios.*

So it stands to reason that yes, some of my dates are rather uneventful. Like Alabama. When the most I can think of to say is we went somewhere hipster which I didn’t know existed in a southern state, and our code name for my date was “Texas Ranger” (yes, dates get code names; no, Megs and I don’t have code names…but we probably should), it’s obvious we’re existing in the “indifferent” section of dating. My Alabama date was extremely nice. Just a good all around dude, easy to chat with, had played in a semi-pro orchestra, and despite growing up in the south didn’t seem weirded out by my outspokenness (though he did seem taken aback by it. I’m getting the impression women in this area are much more demure than I often am).

However, even though the date was cordial, certainly to the point of being pleasant, neither Texas Ranger nor I were chopping at the bit to speak again. More remarkable than our date or the Mexican food (oy, burritos in Montgomery, Alabama – no bueno) was the waitress’ outfit, which was a pair of leggings and a midriff baring top, and the 15 men in officer’s training who were at the restaurant on their one night out drooling over her.

Alabama, though, was a lovely little place, where Megan and I heard an interesting interview with Taylor Swift on NPR. Yep, they have NPR there.

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*Not quite relevant is this really interesting look at how many first dates you have to go to meet “the one.”

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