This is a valuable lesson I learned recently. After spending some time getting to know a girl at school I decided she was worthy of a date. However when asking her I simply said I would like to take her out to dinner and then to our Boot Party for school. She was unable to go to the Boot Party because of her back but said that going to dinner sounded fun. YES! I was in like Flynn. I told her I would make reservations at a restaurant in Arlington and pick her up around 8. I went to Student Clinician Ceremony before hand where there was dinner served (didn't know that was going to happen), and then booked it from downtown to pick her up.
She lives in the back house of some friends so this made things tricky, I went to the front door of the main house which she was unable to leave from, so I had to make my way back to the car pull up to the back house that she lives in and then get out of the car and preceded to open the door for her. We made our way to Olenjacks Grille in Arlington to what I thought was a great dinner with good conversation. She ordered a grilled chicken salad with Russian dressing. I thought this was a great sign since girls always order salads on dates. After about an hour of conversation the waiter brought us the check. I immediately grabbed the check to pay; she reached for her purse and offered to pay for her portion of the bill. I thought this was odd but assured myself she was just trying to be polite. After a few more mins of conversation we left which I opened her door again and went to drop her off. We of course jammed to my favorite two Michael Jackson songs on the way home: Will you be there? (Free Willy) and Black or White. When I say jam I mean I was singing at the top of my lungs and borderline dancing as best as one can while driving a car. In my mind this date is going great. Now here comes the moment of doom. We sat in the circle drive in front of her house having some casual conversation to end the date, when she drops the dreaded F-Bomb. "Thanks for a dinner it was fun. But if you keep paying for your FRIENDS meals you are going to wind up broke and you won’t be able to pay for Africa." A million thoughts rushed through my head and I am sure my face lost all color, but somehow I quickly changed the conversation and left shortly there after.
I didn't state my intentions upfront and this lead to a huge amount of confusion. I came up with four things this could have meant. 1) She word vomited and didn’t meant to say it and was just awkward because she didn’t know how to end the date that I never called a date 2) This is the biggest hint of all time 3) She was fishing for my intentions and just gave me the big cheese down the middle (that I just looked at and didn’t swing 4) She said it and didn’t even realize it.
After a few minutes of freak out time I made my way back to the Boot Party and had to let all my friends know "how it went" since they knew where I was because I didn’t eat during the Student Clinician Ceremony. I then had to contemplate these thoughts and try to rationalize it all through the weekend. I finally had the talk of intentions (not to be confused with a DTR) a few days later in which, she informed me she didn't think it was a date, she noticed I got really quiet after that moment but didn’t think anything of it. So from now on always state your intentions and avoid all the confusion.
