Broken Dreams, Shattered Piñatas

Submitted by Alana:

I met Don on an online site. He was a tall, well-educated, and athletic architect who was also a guitarist. We were from the same area originally, having relocated thousands of miles to our current city.

On our first date, he took me out to a very expensive restaurant and made sure to treat me like a lady. He seemed promising, but after a few more dates, something seemed amiss.  He had a tendency to steer conversations by making statements, rather than answering the questions I had just asked.

For instance, I met his cat and asked, “What’s the cat’s name?”

He replied, “He used to belong to my old girlfriend of 10 years and he grew so close to me while we lived together that when we broke up, she let me keep him.”

“That’s great. What’s his name?”

Our penultimate date had gone rather poorly, with him blatantly criticizing me, so it surprised me when he invited me to a birthday party at his apartment complex. I thought I would give him one last opportunity to either redeem himself or hammer that proverbial nail into our "budding relationship" coffin.

I came over a little before the party to help set up. They had a gorgeous backyard, perfect for barbecues. The birthday girl had bought three piñatas and needed help stringing them from the porch to the fence. She put Don on that task and he asked if I would help.

He may have been an architect, but I would consider myself to be an excellent problem-solver.  The rope he had clearly wasn’t long enough to make it from the porch to the fence, and I suggested using the extra ethernet cable I had seen up in his apartment.

He was lost at that point, so I explained that we could tie one end of the rope to the porch, tie each piñata at different intervals along the rope so they didn’t bunch together, combine the rope and the ethernet cable, and tie off the other end to the fence.

He tied one end of the rope to the porch all the same, completely ignoring what I had said.  When he found that the rope still wasn't long enough, he looked at me and said, “That wasn’t a very good idea. I can’t believe you would suggest that. It’s not going to work at all.”

I said, “That’s because you’re not doing what I suggested.”

So I took charge and executed my idea.  The hostess told me, “That was such a great idea!” I thought I was being helpful. Apparently Don took it as a personal attack on his manhood.

During the party, after each person had taken their turn at the piñatas, I decided it was acceptable to take a turn. I didn’t want to impose, since I was just the neighbor’s date. The piñata I chose, having already been beaten to within an inch of its structural integrity, fell off on my first hit. Another guy at the party grabbed a stick and we both started beating it on the ground until it started to ooze its candy innards.

We laughed and high-fived and I turned back to Don. He stood there with his arm outstretched.

He said, “Hit me.”

“What?”

“Hit me. You can’t hit very hard. It won’t hurt. Hit me.”

It took every ounce of willpower not to take that wiffle bat and bash him upside the head. Instead, I tossed the bat at his feet, turned around, and never spoke to him again.