"Reevaluate My Life - Now"

Story Submitted by Katie:

Fred was an aspiring lobbyist for an environmental group.  He wasn't one to mince words, which was a welcome change from the usual kind of guy I encountered online.  His first message was something like, "We're both on here to meet people who you'll never know any more about than what they say about themselves in their profiles, so why don't we meet up in a public place and get to know each other the old-fashioned way?"

I thought it was a good point, so we ended up meeting not too long after that first message.

Fred, it turned out, had a fine attention to detail.  Too fine, one might be inclined to say.  I was to meet him at a restaurant at 7:30.  At the beginning of the date, after our initial hug, he handed me a folded piece of paper.

I unfolded it.  It was a schedule.

The first thing listed on it was: "Handshake/(hug)? - 7:30pm."

The next thing was: "Walk to table - 7:31pm."

After that: "Dinner - 7:32-8:25pm."

I laughed and asked, "This is a joke, right?"

He didn't answer, but told the host that we were ready to sit down.

Conversation was a little awkward at dinner, as he kept having to refer to a printout of my profile to ask me things about myself.

8:20 rolled around and he looked at his watch.  He said, "It's time to go soon.  Ready?"

I was, although I desperately wanted to mess with his schedule.

I didn't have long to wait.  It was a cold winter night, and his next activities (after "Exit restaurant - 8:26-8:27pm) was: "Walk to park" and then "Explore park."

As mentioned, it was cold, and I wasn't sure how much exploring I could do.  There was, however, an old water tower in the middle of this town park, and I wanted to climb it.

When I told him that, though, he said, "Is it on the schedule?"

I said, "It says 'Explore the park.'  That's included."

He shook his head with a smarmy little grin.  "The schedule's specific enough.  Let's just explore the park.  No water tower climbing."

I protested, "The water tower's in the park."

He said, "The schedule doesn't say, 'Climb water tower.'"

I offered to climb it myself and then come right back down.  He didn't like that one bit.  Mostly because it would have made us late for the next thing on the schedule, "Ice cream!"

I went ahead and did it anyway.  It took me less than fifteen minutes to go up and down, but he stuck around at the bottom the entire time, sulked, and when I made it back down, he said, "I guess we're just going to follow your schedule for the rest of the night.  Let's have it."

I said that I didn't have anything specific in mind.  He said that at least he had the decency to print out his schedule on fine paper.

At that point, I came up with a schedule.  It was, "End date - now."

To be fair, he walked me back to my car, but he moaned the whole way that, "If we just stuck to my schedule, we wouldn't be in this sorry mess."