Foot-in-Mouth Disease - Part 1

Yet another fun first-date story… because, it’s required, right?  Well, it should be.  Not having a good meeting/first-date story should be grounds for annulment in my book.  If you can’t tell that one with some laughs, then you have no business being together in the first place.  J

Without further ado, here is the meet-cute of me and The New Guy.

The New Guy.

The New Guy and I met over drinks following a long day at work.  I had zero expectations.  In fact, I was more looking forward to my delicious chicken dinner waiting for me at home than getting drinks with a relative stranger.  Yay for blind dates!  :-/

But nonetheless, I went.  And within seconds of meeting TNG, I came down with a terrible case of foot-in-mouth disease (not to be confused with foot AND mouth disease – which really is terrible… my fake ailment was tragic at best).  I could not say anything right.  In fact, I’m not sure whether he felt bad for me and this was part of an outreach program… or he just had nothing better to do… or maybe he really found my ramblings endearing...  (My money would be on the second option.)

First horrible interaction of the evening:

(Following several exciting stories of his world travels, etc…)

Me:  “So what do you do for work again?”

TNG:  “I’m a rep for Generic Financial/Insurance Company.”

Me:  (Eek!  *Obvious roll-of-the-eyes*)

TNG:  “Um…. What was that all about?” (referring to my less-than-stealth eye-rolling).

Me:  “Um… nothing.  I mean…. Ok… let me explain” (This is where I should have just apologized and changed the subject… but no… I continued) “my ex-boyfriend was not very good… at life.  And we ended up breaking up over some financial issues.  And months after we broke up he called me to tell me he had gotten a job as a financial rep with Generic Financial/Insurance Company so I just assumed they took anyone.  And really… a monkey must be able to do that job if they hired him…”

(and as the word-vomit continued, he sat stunned)

Me:  “But, I mean, you’ve done all these wonderful things with your life and now… you just work there?”

...How he didn’t just get up and walk out is beyond me.  But I couldn’t stop it.  It’s not how I felt about the company OR him – it was just the only association I’d ever had with GF/IC.  There was nothing I could really do about it except apologize for my ignorance.  And apologize profusely, I did.  And blush out of extreme embarrassment, I did as well.

But he hung in there.

Because my foot-in-mouth disease was not anywhere near healed…

More on that later.