Love at First Date

I once told a girl I loved her on our first date. In my defense, I was fourteen, had never been kissed, and it was my first date ever (I’ll spare the suspense and tell you that by the end of this date, I still had never been kissed).

This girl had been my crush for months, and I learned through mutual friends that she liked me too, which, at that age, felt like the equivalent of winning two state lotteries in the same day while breaking a world juggling record. My best friend told me that for our first date, I should take her to a movie, and that he'd come along for moral support. True to teen-dating protocol, she also brought her best friend along. And I think they each brought friends. So we had about five spectators.

I went the entire first hour of the movie without even looking at her, trying to imagine how one transitions from not holding a girl's hand to suddenly holding it without a confrontation. I decided I needed a smooth line to say. I grasped for memories of what I'd seen other people do in this situation. Somehow, at fourteen, the only example I could think of was my parents, and, in a momentary lapse of judgement, I lost track of any difference between the etiquitte of a first-date versus that of an eighteen-year marriage. I leaned over confidently as I'd seen my dad do with my mom, placed my hand on my brand new girlfriend's hand, and said softly, in the most seductive voice I could muster, “I love you.”

Remember in the movie Borat, the way the old woman looks when Borat walks into her dining room holding a bag of his own feces? That about sums up this girl's response. She turned to her best friend and whispered something, her friend turned to her friend, and before you knew it, everyone around me was giggling with such rapture that popcorn was literally spilling off their laps. For the rest of the year, wherever I went, I'd be greeted by all of her friends with "I love you", and a huge grin.

The day after my first date, I was dumped. It was October 21st, 1998, the day the Yankees beat the Padres in the World Series, and the reason she gave for dumping me was that, as a Padres fan, she was in mourning, and was too distraught to date for awhile. We all knew the truth, though. It was the age-old, "It's not you, it's not me...it's the Padres". It's the most common breakup line in San Diego.

I ended up having my first kiss a couple of years later, and it wasn't until long after that I told a girl I loved her and meant it. Everything in its time. But no matter how far we get from puberty, that process of taking a risk, making a mistake, and eventually moving forward- is hopefully something we never grow out of. In fact, I think it's the only way we grow..

I love you,

Jakob