School Daze

Story Submitted by Doug:

Willa's first email to me was the question, "Where did you go to college?"  I wrote her back with the answer, thinking that she might have been a former classmate I didn't recognize.  She replied back to that with a standard message, and I almost forgot her introductory message until our first date.

We were at a restaurant when I remembered and asked her, "Why did you ask me where I went to college in your first message?"

She replied, "I had to be sure that you were intelligent.  So many morons have emailed me over that site, and invariably, they all went to some dumb public college.  It's a good weed-out mechanism."

I stared at her and said, "Not everyone who went to a public college is an idiot."

She said, "Name one person who isn't."

I said, "Me."

She shook her head.  "You went to the University of Michigan."

I said, "Right.  Public school that it is."

She narrowed her eyes and thought for close to a minute.  Finally, she nodded slowly and said, "Well, it's pretty much private."

"But it isn't."

"But it is."

"The University of California, SUNY Binghamton, the University of Virginia... all great public schools."

"They're all also pretty much private."

"Where do you draw the line?"

She sighed.  "All the rest of them."

"Even Georgia Tech?"

She shuddered.  "Especially Georgia Tech.  I have an ex who goes there."

"So that makes it full of morons?"

"If they accepted him?  Yeah."

I was silent for a while after that, and she didn't say anything, until she added, "You ask a lot of questions.  Stupid questions."

First and last date.