My worst date ever.

It was my junior year in New Trier (nee) East high school, winter of 1975. Yours truly had a great year in football as the league’s leading rusher and I had a great indoor track season. Won the league in the high jump, long jump and 400 and we had gone undefeated at home the whole indoor season in the 4 x 100 relay.

And my social stock was soaring, if I do say so. By this time I had dated four really cute girls. Two were cheerleaders. Prior to this, my athletic success far exceeded my social success. Yes, I dated one really nice girl my sophmore year, but I was shy and we had no idea what we were doing. 

Our rival sister high school, the nee New Trier West, practiced in our indoor track with us. (We weren’t very nice to them and I truly regret that now) Arguably one of the prettiest girls at New Trier West was a track timer, Mary. She was tall, pretty and had thick, long blonde hair. 

She asked me to go out. Apparently I said yes.

A good friend of mine, Mike, from eighth grade, who now attended NTW, had dated this girl, Mary, as did many other guys, and he called me and said I was in for a hilarious surprise.

“What?”

“You’ll see.”

At the time I thought this “surprise” went along the lines of the rumors that this girl, Mary, had, well, been around the block a little bit. 

So things were looking good. My parents were out of town, which never happened, and, who knows? I might even lose a little thing that rhymes with my schmirginity.

It was a freezing cold Friday night, it just happened that our two schools were playing each other in basketball at her school, New Trier West. So I thought, go to the basketball game, then go to the dance following, then dinner, and then a killer party. Then back to my house for the good stuff.

What could go wrong?

The first problem? She wanted to sit on her team’s side, and I wanted to sit on mine. Our very first discussion was an argument I lost. Mary made it clear the latter was not going to happen. 

Not a word was exchanged during the game. Also during the game I was the recipient of many dirty looks from people around me. The larger ego part of me wanted to think the dirty looks were from earlier in the Fall, because I had scored three touchdowns against NTW in a route. (Sniff of smugness)

The truth was Mary was, well, not popular, but well-renowned due to her reputation for dating lots and lots of guys. She had already gone through her high school and was now working on mine. It seemed everyone wanted to know the story behind Mary's next conquest.

OK, tense game over, let’s go to the dance. They were checking ID’s to get into the dance. The problem? Apparently I had lost my wallet during the game.  

After an hour of searching under the bleachers with Mary, arms folded, literally tapping her foot with boredom – I thought that was just done in bad TV shows – we decided to skip the dance and go straight to dinner.

Through some miracle, I managed to bum $20 off a friend for pizza and coke. Not a lot was said during dinner. Mary was not a great conversationalist. On a scale of one to ten, she was horrible.

OK, let’s find the party. The problem? The address of the party was on a piece of paper in my wallet.

So we drove around where I thought the party may be. No luck. Never found it. Mary was not amused. 

Screw it, let’s start the festivities at my home early. There was wine. Some snacks. Music. Candles.  This was more like it. 

Mary then asked to see my high school yearbook.

Huh? What does my yearbook have to do with losing my schmirginity? 

For the next two hours, Mary looked through my yearbook pointing out all the guys she had gone out with before saying very nasty things about them.   

After about guy number 29, I popped up and said;

“OK, let’s get you home.”

To put in perspective how annoying Mary was, she was a pretty tall blonde supposedly easier than falling out of a boat, I was six feet one and 185 pounds, 150 of those pounds were male hormones. 

And I passed

The date was officially a disaster and I was calling the time of death. Easy or not, this girl was a genuine pain in the ass. Great looking, but a pain all the same. 

When we got to her house, I did not have any interest in walking her to her door. That is how fed up with her I was. 

Suddenly Mary leaned over and jammed her tongue deep in my mouth. In a purely defensive move, I pushed back with my tongue. This tongue tug-of-war went on for a bit. One time, when I pushed back to keep from choking, she started biting my tongue.

Hard.

“Ow, that really hurt.”

“Oh, sorry, let me do it a little softer.”

Now that was much better. Then, out of nowhere, she bit down even harder than the first time. No lie, I heard my tongue crunch like in a cartoon. 

“Whath the f*ckth are you doingth?” I screamed/lisped. “Geth the hell out of hereth.”

That was the surprise my now ex-friend, Mike, had warned me about? I was going to kill him. All the way home I checked my tongue for blood.

At the track practice on Monday, “Hannibal Lecter” Mary made a big scene of walking up to me and, in front of my entire track team, she said loudly;

“I don’t want to go out with you anymore.”

My dear, close, beloved track buddies wet themselves laughing.