Thursday, July 5, 2012

Dinner conversations

So this one is not all bad, it does go to show I am stupid for girls with a southern accent though.

I met this gal at a friend's party, sort of a friend of a friend thing and we started dating, things were pretty good. Funny, southern accent (did I mention I am a sucker for that), educated, thinks I am funny...

So after about a month of dating I get invited to a friend of the family's for Easter dinner. These people have known me since I was 8; seriously I went to elementary, middle and high school with their kids. Scary that we are all grown up now. So I invite this gal to dinner as they specifically ask to meet whomever I am dating (they like to tease me about this, they also give my folks updates via email). So my date we will call her April (name changed to prevent embarrassment), has asked what the situation is dress code(because really family friends and such, got to impress them), and we show up on time with the obligatory bottle of wine.

So after about 45 minutes of pre-dinner socializing, we all sit down at the table which is an antique French formal dining table. Think 10-12 seats on each side, with one at each end, hand carved table tops, and may have been used once to sit at and read a just published Charles Dickens novel (NOT JOKING, serious money, seriously old, serious antique) .

First course (soup) is fine small talk, how is college, which car is better Ford or Chevy (Subaru here, but AWD is very important in Alaska). And on and on. So out comes the Easter lamb, and we all get served a slice of lamb roast. I hear a noise and a gasp and low and behold April (just to my right) has whipped out a pocket knife to cut her roast. Now just a Swiss army knife, sure no problem but this is more than that, it is first NOT pocket knife but a tactical knife, blade in the 5 inch range, one handed opening, locking blade. All out of a sun dress, not sure where since she had no pockets. (It is Easter, apparently sun dresses are what you wear on Easter).

http://www.spyderco.com/catalog/details.php?product=358 (web page for knife she had)


The gasp is the hostess who is having a crisis of conscience trying to figure out if the china(likely same ere as the table) we are eating off of will be hurt by the knife and to say something sparing relics from the middle ages, OR to be the impeccable host and not say anything.   So dinner conversation goes on for a few minutes as we all politely pretend to ignore the very large very aggressive knife wielding woman in our midst (the lamb was nicely cooked, NOT tough, I managed just fine with the provided knife). After cutting her lamb into bite sized pieces April closed the knife and returned it to not her pocket, but just to the side of her plate. (Now I have carried a Leatherman, Swiss army knife or some such tool since elementary school days, tactical knife not so much).

So the obvious question of how long we have been dating comes up and its follow up question will you continue dating (hey they are like stand in parents). And as April (who was asked the question) answers, the Hostess's husband drops his fork and jumps back in a double take.

Well I knew April had been in a car wreck about a year prior and it was bad (65mph head on). The thing I DIDN'T know was that she had 2 prosthetic upper front teeth that could be popped out for eating. We had done dinner several times but I didn't know about the teeth, she had never taken them out before. Well I did a double take too; someone suddenly missing their front teeth is freaky.

She and I dated about 2 weeks longer and then she found a guy who she liked more and that was the end of that. I never got a good explanation as to why her knife was needed, why the teeth came out, or why I was not a decent enough guy. She was later dumped by that guy and left town in a hurry with a couple theft allegations following her.

Not as strange or quirky as the others but I STILL get grief from the family friends. Ran into them at their daughter’s wedding a month ago and it was the first topic of conversation.