On Porpoise

Story Sent in by Dan:

I can impersonate the sound of a seagull. That's one of the many things in my profile, listed to make me come off as humorous and unique. As expected, many emails I receive reference it in some way.

Enter Jane. She said in her first email to me that she could impersonate a dolphin. We hit it off and wound up on a date to an aquarium.

Early on, she asked me to demonstrate my seagull-mimicking prowess. I did just that, and she loved it. Then I asked for her dolphin impression.

It sounded like a siren, car horn, and vomiting, all at once. It was a horrifying sound, and loud. She went on with it long enough to attract stares, and I finally had to say, "That's enough."

She then increased its volume, clapped her hands several times, and then stopped. She was like a crazy person. I told her that it sounded more like a drowning dolphin, and then she said, "How about this?" and then cleared her throat and made the same awful sound again.

When her breath ran out she took a deep breath and started in with the sound again. I said to her, "That's fine. Thank you." She clapped her hands once more, then stopped.

"That was great," I said.

She replied by saying, "Let's go see the dolphins," then made that stupid noise while heading down the hall. Kids and their parents freaked. I didn't blame them.

We saw the dolphins, Jane tried to communicate with them, and when that didn't work, we decided to grab a bite. On our way to the cafe, she asked me, "I know my dolphin call needs work."

I joked, "You think so?"

She ran to a bathroom, and from outside of it, I could clearly hear her practicing her dolphin screech. People walked by the bathroom and glanced at it in terror, hurrying on their way.

She was at it for about five minutes when she emerged and said, "I have it," then did the noise once more, complete with clapping hands.

I smiled and told her, "Well done." The rest of our date went fine, and the evil dolphin made no further appearances.

I decided to not ask her out again, and planned to wait a day or two before writing her an email to inform her. However, before I could, she left me a nice voicemail telling me what a nice time she had. The voicemail ended with that shrill, godawful dolphin cry, and I knew that whenever I ended up writing her that email, I was doing the right thing.