During one particular parking lot party, I was sitting in traffic with three of my girlfriends after a game. My friend pointed out that we were sitting next to two guys in a silver Volkswagen Beetle. If you’re unfamiliar with these cars, they look something like this:
Hello Kitty optional, but can be exchanged for bumper stickers that say “Women are great leaders. You’re following one now”. In short, the sight of two young men sitting side by side in a VW beetle is uncommon. This particular beetle did not have cats or bumper stickers. But, it did have a sign on it that said "Chris Collins” with a phone number.
Not being able to withstand my curiosity any longer, I called to the guy in the passenger seat and said, “What’s Chris Collins?” He replied, “What do you mean?” And I said, “Is it a business or what? What is that sign on the car for?” The driver leaned over and said, “Chris Collins-A hundred and sixty pounds of pure tiger meat trapped in a steel cage.”
My friends and I all looked at each other, not really knowing what to do with that information. So, I did the most obvious thing. I called the number.
The driver of the beetle reached into his pocket, answered his phone and said, “Hello.”
"Excuse me,” I said, “I’m looking for one hundred and sixty pounds of pure tiger meat trapped in a steel cage.” And the driver laughed.
We spent the next twenty minutes on the phone getting to know each other. He was Chris. I asked him how old he was, since he looked very young to me. He asked how old I was. I told him that I was almost thirty (this was in 2009) and he replied that he was twenty-seven. At some point, clearly, I needed to ask him why he had his phone number on his car. He replied that his friends had made it as a joke to cheer him up. He was going through a rocky divorce. My friends and I were also curious as to why a VW beetle was his car of choice. His response was, “Let’s just say that it was left to me”, which I took to mean that it was his ex-wife’s car. By the end of the phone call, we had agreed that we would talk soon and my friends were looking at me, in amazement of my mastery of flirtation.
After I dropped the girls off, my phone rang. It was Chris. He was still driving home to Attleboro and he wanted to talk more. We had a really fantastic conversation. He asked me out for that following Friday and I agreed. But, something seemed a bit off. For example, when I asked him where he went to college, he evaded the answer. When I asked him what he liked to do in his free time, he said, “Let’s talk more about you.” When I brought up his messy divorce, he somehow changed direction of the conversation and before I knew it, I was telling him about my last breakup.
When I hung up, being the stalker that I am, I immediately went to my computer to google him. I found him on facebook. After he accepted my friend request, I greedily looked onto his info page so that I could learn more about him: where he went to college, what he did for work, what kind of music he liked.
I saw one thing and one thing only. Like it was in bold letters, underlined, with a neon sign and a tap-dancing gigantic-handed cartoon character pointing to it. He was a graduate of Attleboro high school…Class of 2009. I’m not usually a math whiz, but considering that at that time, it was 2009, it wasn’t hard to deduce that this boy WAS EIGHTEEN YEARS OLD!!! So, after a quip on his facebook page sympathizing with him for being the only twenty-seven year old in his senior class, I never spoke with him again.
P.S. I love the way he thought that throwing in the "divorce" would make his story legit. P.P.S. The beetle was his mom's car.
LOL! Wow, your dating stories are better than mine! My dating stories are not as F'ed Up Fun. Mine are just F'ed Up.
ReplyDeleteProbably still make for good stories though?
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