TMI Thursday: A Pick-up Line and a Potato

Another TMI Thursday, folks. As always, the rules:

"Join us all in humiliating the crap out of yourself every Thursday by sharing some completely tasteless, wholly unclassy, 'how many readers can I estrange THIS week??' TMI story about your life. Or hell, about someone else's!"

For more TMI goodness, check out the TMI Queen herself, LiLu!

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When I was a freshman in college, I knew as little about the opposite sex as I did about harvesting honey from Africanized beehives. Not only was I naive, I was completely freaked out by the sheer concept of men. I didn't know how they worked (in more than one sense of the word), I didn't know what kind of expectations they had and I didn't understand what motivated them.

Men were a foreign concept. Oh, how things have changed.

About two months into my first semester, I met Dis in a fraternity basement. Our interaction went as follows:

Dis: "Do you know how much a polar bear weighs?"
Me: "What?"
Dis: "Enough to break the ice?"

Yes, that line was actually spoken aloud. Dis almost immediately apologized, saying "I just had to see what your response to that line would be." I think my reaction was one of slight amusement, but corny pick-up lines, even in jest, will never be the swiftest route to a girl's heart. Or pants.

Dis continued to woo me over the next couple of weeks. I had no idea what to do. Looking back, I think I was too inexperienced to even ascertain if I was interested-- I was too afraid of what might follow if, heaven forbid, I showed any interest. I downplayed his advances by responding with humor...and lots of it. One such AIM conversation went a little something like this:

Dis: "So, what kind of things are you into?"
Me: "Lots of stuff. Like art. And music. But mostly potatoes."
Dis: "Potatoes?"
Me: "They're just so delicious. And interesting. I could talk about potatoes for days and days."

I know. Lame. And not even that funny. But such was the degree of my lameness. However, my attempt to derail Dis's line of flirtatious questioning quickly went awry. As soon as I delivered my last potato line, Dis wrote "Be right back. Wait five minutes." I sat at my computer scratching my head, when suddenly there was a knock at the door. I looked at my computer screen, and then to my closed door. Oh no.

I opened it to find Dis standing there, proudly holding a potato in his hands.

Cute, right? Had I been a few years older, I probably would have thought so. Instead, freshman Pumpernickel was freaked out. Now I had done it. Now there was a real flirtation here that I had to address. And expectations. Oh, the expectations.

Dis asked me out to Thai food, and not knowing what else to do, I accepted. Dinner was nice, but I knew it wasn't going anywhere. Still, I couldn't be honest and straightforward. Why? I don't honestly know. But I realized it was very quickly getting out of hand. Following dinner, Dis asked if I wanted to head out to a frat with him. Which, let's be honest, is code for "Let's get drunk, go back to my dorm and make out before my roommate gets home." I thanked him for the invitation, but declined. I was tired, and I was going to go to sleep early. Also, I needed to stop leading him on simply because I was too nervous to do otherwise.

When I got back to my dorm, my friends were in full swing party mode. "Come out with us, Pumpernickel! We're going to the fraaaaats!" I thanked them, but said no. I honestly was tired, and I felt weird going out when I had just told Dis I was staying in. Despite my protests, my friends railed at me until I relented.

"I'm only staying out for an hour," I told them. I was worried I might run into Dis, but how likely was it that out of all the frats, we'd find ourselves in the same one? The chances were slim, I told myself.

However, a slim chance is still a chance nonetheless. And guess who I bumped into, on the second floor of Sig Ep, nearly an hour after I told him I was too tired to go out? Dis and I stared at each other sheepishly. It was awkward, to say the least. And I deserved it, completely.

The punch line to this story is that we became good friends three years later. In fact, just yesterday he gave me permission to recount the incident. We've concluded that we were both so lame back then that neither of us should be held accountable for the awkward potato flirtation.

I'm inclined to agree. Let bygones be bygones, and potatoes be potatoes.