flashback

during my cool down this morning, i thought about that law student i dated back in college. ("dated," here is loosely defined as "we went out for coffee a couple of times.") he had asked for my number/email address during a sleepy one-hour flight to chicago, after a conversation that involved him bashing ann arbor for being boring and me vehemently defending my promised land (gallup park? fleetwood diner?? zingermans??? there is a world outside the law quad, you know!?!) given that i love ann arbor with the core of my being, it was not the best strategy. but, i was still pleasantly surprised to receive an email from him during the break and accepted his invitation to grab coffee at cafe ambrosia when we got back. (side note: my brother, who was reading the email over my shoulder, gleefully shrieked: "his name is noble? as in noble gases?" leave it to mark to reduce everything to inert air.)

anyways, i was thinking about our first date in particular. we had hunkered down on one of those couches by the window, and were proceeding with the obligatory small talk, you know: "who are you? where have you been? what have you been doing? what do you plan to do?" my story was pretty straightforward, after all, i was a senior in college, and my journey wasn't too complex at that point. his story, on the other hand, was a little more... involved: after graduating he had spent time in a ph.d. program for english lit, and after a couple of years, had decided that he wasn't cut out for academia, and had moved on to work on abolishing the death penalty, then spent a year after that as a paralegal. i should have been attentive, but in my head, i was frantically doing the math: "three years in a ph.d. program? five years lobbying against the death penalty? good god, how old are you?" i admit, i freaked out. i had just turned 23, and, as i found out later, he was 32. that's a nearly a decade, folks...

i suppose i should have some concluding paragraph here about how much i've changed since then, now that i'm 25, yadda yadda yadda. that wasn't really the intent, i kind of just wanted to convey the image of me sitting on a couch at cafe ambrosia, my eyes widening as noble describes the many years leading up to law school. when our conversation moves to tv shows we enjoy, he talks about growing up with a black-and-white set. then he mentions in passing what the carter years were like from his memories as a young boy, and i glance at the door, plotting my escape. the best part was when he went for a kiss, i was looking over my right shoulder to gauge how far of a dash it was from the entrance of the cafe to the corner of maynard and liberty street, and his lips landed on my left earmuff. i could hear him thinking, as he picked wooly lint from his mouth: "hm... well that didn't work out as i had planned... should i try again?"

ah, the foibles of dating! my new philosophy is: if the date's not going really well, i want it to be comically, if not painfully awkward. that way, i can just flip through the microfiche of my life to find something to entertain me during my runs. and to post on my blog, of course. amen.

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footnote: okay, i guess we can talk about the main issue. am i an age-ist? i dunno... for me, nine years is a huge age gap... it would definitely give me as much pause at 25 that it did at 23. i kind of want to hear what we all think about dating significantly older/younger people.