Adventures in Dating #1: Daffy Duck

A few years ago, I went out a few times with a guy named T. (All names in this series will be changed to protect the innocent.) I met T on Match.com, which was my "get back on the horse" method for re-entering the dating pool whenever I got dumped, which unfortunately was not that uncommon. T was cute, had recently moved here from Virginia, and apparently was recently divorced. I probably would have seen these last 2 things as warning signs if not for the cute part, but in the mindset I was in I wanted to date as many people as humanly possible, so I gladly agreed when he suggested we meet in person.

We planned to meet on a weeknight at a restaurant in my neighborhood. I work until 7 most nights, and T had a dentist appointment after work on the day we were going to meet. He said he would call me once the appointment was over so that we could plan a place and time to meet (presumably because he did not know how long his dentist appointment would take.) I left work a bit early that day to go home and get ready, and on the way home, T called me. It was the first time we'd spoken on the phone, and he sounded cute--as much as someone can "sound cute" over the phone, anyway--but he also sounded like he had been pumped full of novocaine and was slurring his words. I worried he would want to cancel because the procedure had been more invasive than he expected, but to my surprise he wanted to confirm that we would meet at Atkins Park.

I asked him if he was sure he wanted to go ahead and meet when he was so full of novocaine, trying to be thoughtful and considerate. He asked "what novocaine?" I said I assumed he had been pumped full of novocaine at the dentist. He said that no, it had just been a routine cleaning. To my horror, I realized that T wasn't slurred with drugs, he just had a lisp. A very pronounced one.

We met that night and had a decent first date, decent enough that we were willing to go on subsequent dates. But after I took him to the Willie Nelson/Merle Haggard concert a few weeks later and was terrified the whole way home that his lispy mouth was going to attempt to connect with mine, I decided I had to break it off. It is never a good idea when you are actually afraid to kiss someone.

(T was also the only guy I have voluntarily dated who was shorter than me, and that may have contributed to things ending as well. For years my shorter female friends have lamented that I am being stupid by foreclosing dating shorter men, and so I decided to be open-minded for once. It never stopped bothering me that even with flats I had at least 2 inches on T.)