Bad Dates

So this site, all about horrid first dates, reminded me of my date with The Boy Who Would Be King, and I thought I would tell you about it. (I thought I would have a rant.)

There was just the one date - one was sufficient to realise that there would never be enough room in the relationship for me, the Boy Who Would Be King (BK for short), the Deeds of the Boy Who Would Be King, and the Rudery of the Boy Who Would Be King, and the Ego of the Boy Who Would Be King. The BK was one of those unfortunate individuals who had been stung in the face by an Ego-Bee and as a result his head had swollen to an enormous size (credit to Owen for the concept of Ego-Bees) - this became obvious within ten minutes of our arrival at dinner.

I was being polite, and I asked, "How was your day at work?" Long story about the BK's work followed, which was fine. Longer pause, in which the BK expressed no interest about my work day, followed that, which was less fine. Then the BK launched into a story about his weekend, which was even unfiner. I did talk about my weekend, but for a matter of moments, because then he launched into a story about his family.

The family story was long and somehow segued into the BK stating that he had the family traits of "moderate intelligence and silliness." I said yes, silliness. I remained silent on the question of intelligence. But that was ok because the BK, unprompted, elaborated that he liked to consider himself moderately intelligent. "Oh, good," I said, and slurped at my wine. There was a pause. "In high school," he said, "I ranked in the 99th percentile." I should probably have been impressed by his enormous brain of days gone by, but for some reason I wasn't. "You can't be in the 100th percentile," he said. I went "Really," and had some more wine.

Foolishly thinking it was safe, I changed the topic to the bog standard What Do You Do. The BK held forth about stints being a lifeguard and training to be a pilot and many other worthy things. I became annoyed and said cheerfully that I loved working for a big corporate company and that I was unashamedly materialistic. "Wow," he said, "I really like that."
But it turned out that he had misheard and thought I was UNmaterialistic and, sadly, this served as the springboard for a huge rant about how after he'd been to India everything changed and he saw the world for what it was and blah blah blah blah blah and now the new plan was to become a physiotherapist.

"Christ," I said (by this stage most of the wine was gone,) "that must be fucking boring after all the piloting!"
"Actually," he said, "I find it very rewarding. But then I am working with disabled children."

And that is the point where I got the giggles horribly and could not stop laughing and the date was brought to an abrupt end and that was the end of the BK. God knows where he is now. Probably he got a medical degree in half an hour and went to an African village to minister to the natives, but they ate his brain because it was so obviously large and full of good thoughts and also because he annoyed the shit out of them.

But go and check out that website. Their dates are way worse than mine.