if it looks like a date and walks like a date

So I went to a beer festival in late September with a few friends. Meredith ended up knowing one of the guys serving some of the home brewed beer. We shall call him Chicken, because his name rhymes with a term for chicken. Chicken invited us to an after party. I think it sounds cool, because I’m assuming lots of the beer brewers will be there. We showed up and it was just me, Meredith, Chicken, and Chicken’s wife. No one spoke. It was extremely awkward. Meredith tells me later that she only knows the guy though her very recent ex.

So I was invited to go to a Fat Tuesday Brewmaster’s dinner at a local brewery. The place has amazing food and amazing beer. I was really excited to go to this epic five-course dinner. I walked in with my friend and there’s one place for us to sit. I know that I know the couple sitting at the table, but I don’t know how. I was in full-blown panic mode trying to remember who the couple was before we were committed to the table. As we are walking over I realized it was Chicken and his wife!

Chicken is immediately weird with me. Thankfully my friend is smooth in socially awkward situations and managed to pull together the semblance of a normal conversation. I actually had a lot of fun at the dinner and with my friend. I was very thankful he seemed to be the perfect creeper shield.

Then Chicken made a comment about us being on a date. To be 100% honest, I realized we looked like we were on a date. It’s a guy and a girl at a nice dinner. I shrugged it off, because I never got the impression he liked me, or that I liked him. So Chicken drops the D words like a giant bomb. My eyes grew as being as eggs and I wasted no time saying, “Oh we aren’t on a date.” I’ve had so many creepers butt into my love life that at this point I guess I’m a little defensive about it!

My friend confirmed it wasn’t a date. I think he gave the reason, “I didn’t pick her up. If it was a date, wouldn’t I have picked her up?” LOL. Chicken goes, “Oh okaaaaaaaaaay. It isn’t often I take girls to a dimly lit fancy dinner and not call it a date, but whatever you say.” Then he keeps bringing it up. Mentioning little ways it seems to be a date. At some point I just tuned it out. I could really care less what he thought. I did tune back in to hear my friend say, “Yeah okay. It looks like a date, so yeah I guess it is a date.” DOH! Not what I wanted. No one wants to be a default date.

It sounds like all of this ruined dinner. I don’t know how my friend really feels, but he was a champ at saving the day. He really did deflect most of the hostility and the boys managed to get along fine. The little conversations about if it was a date or if it wasn’t were all pretty short. Once my friend said that it was a date, Chicken left it alone. He only mentioned it once more when we left. His parting shot was, “I hope you two have a nice time on the rest of your date.”

I text a friend from out-of-state about this when I got home. He wrote me back, “Little Rock really is the smallest town ever isn’t it?” Little Rock has nearly 190,000 people. If you add in the greater Little Rock area it’s more like 700,000. That’s way too many people for me to run into someone every ime I go out, but I sure do manage it! I wrote him back and just said, “No I just know everyone!”