After meeting a woman through an Internet dating service and talking with her on the phone almost every day for a month, we decided I’d visit her in the Orlando, Florida, area for a Friday-to-Sunday weekend in order to accomodate her schedule (she’s a widowed mother of four children).
During our weekend date, we both enjoyed our time with each other. She was finding that things didn’t go super-well with her youngest, a three-year-old boy, while she was away much of the weekend, but I told her that it might’ve been different if she didn’t go home each night (I wasn’t suggesting she spend the night with me at my hotel but was saying that it might be different if she were to visit me for a weekend). And, she was getting scared she might be trying to compare me to her late husband, as our personality-types are very much the same, although our personalities and appearance do differ plenty (well, he also was 6 feet tall and had put on weight in their later years of marriage, but he wasn’t keen on trying to work it off).
For me, I was troubled by her stance about what church should be, with her saying she believes what her Baptist pastor says, that it’s really for the saved and that the KJV is the best version to use because everyone is familiar with it. I told her that my church in Dallas tries to keep a balance between three groups: mature Christians, new Christians, and the unsaved. And, I told her that it’s more important for people to understand what the Bible says without having to fumble over 400-year-old English, especially for those who are new Christians and had never read the Bible before.
After cleaning up after my arrival on Friday night, we went to eat at a Spanish Cuban restaurant and then sat and talked at a lake that was close to the restaurant (I believe the area was called Celebration, if you’re familiar with the Orlando area). We went back to my hotel and talked some more when we realized that all the places with restrooms around had closed by the time we were needing those facilities.
On Saturday, she met me at my hotel, and we had breakfast before we went to the beach across from her condo not too far from Daytona Beach. Unfortunately, we got to talking so much that I forgot to put on any sunscreen, and I learned that even being overshadowed by a dark blue beach umbrella does not prevent one from becoming a human lobster. Since we had talked so much on the phone, we tried to spend the time at the beach in silence, but we couldn’t keep from talking, so we discussed our respective applicable chapters in the book The Five Love Languages, which I had bought for the occasion.
After we left the beach, she drove me around Daytona Beach, showing me a lot of the sights and the main strip. Once we finished that, we headed back to my hotel where we got caught in a nice, brisk rainstorm (my friends in Arizona would’ve thought it was a hurricane) as we were getting out of her minivan. Rather than her going back home and showering, we took turns using my room’s shower. I had apparently become very tired from my sunburn and had fallen asleep while reading out in the lobby waiting for her to finish that she scared me awake when she came up behind me after she finished with her shower.
Since she doesn’t feel herself very computer literate, I had to show her the very-easy-to-use systems at the Apple store in Orlando, and I also showed her some of the software they had that might be good for her kids (most packages were available for both Macintosh and Windows). Unfortunately, she was so hungry that we cut our shopping short and didn’t get to go look at the shoe or jewelry stores she was interested in, and since all the restaurants at the mall had two-hour waits, we decided to go out to Sonic.
Now, for my date, going to Sonic was an adventure in itself, as she had never been there, nor had she ever experienced a foot-long chili-cheese dog or a cherry limeade with carbonation, so I introduced her to those, and she liked them. Following that, we went to see the movie The Dukes of Hazzard. When she called her daughter before she was to go to bed and told her what movie we were about to go see, her daughter apparently thought it wasn’t “girly” enough (they go see movies like The Princess Diaries 2, which I had already seen on the flight over from Dallas/Ft. Worth to Orlando on Friday), but my date told her daughter that it was a nostalgic movie (we didn’t have too many other choices at the theatre, as The Wedding Crashers probably wouldn’t have been the best one to go see). Since it was late when the movie got out, she dropped me off at my hotel so we’d both get SOME sleep before church in the morning.
As I said earlier, her three-year-old son had been a bit difficult over the weekend and did not want to ride with the baby sitter to church with his three siblings, so he was in his car chair when my date picked me up Sunday morning. But, he did seem lively about telling me about his transformer toy, so we talked about that on the drive to church.
When we made it to Sunday School, my date’s friends didn’t come and attack us with lots of questions and probings as she feared (her class is primarily couples around our age, and most of them knew her and her late husband), so she felt better about that. Since my date sings in the choir, I went to church with the husband of one of her friends, who was taking over for her in nursery duty that day. Since I was quite noticeable due to my sunburn from Saturday’s beach trip, I noticed that one of her friends in choir was able to place me in the audience a lot easier, so she had to answer her about me briefly in that nonchalant way that choir people do when they think no one else is looking.
After church, I met up with my date a little earlier than we had planned, so I got to meet her two other boys, but since her daughter is wanting a daddy big-time, I headed off to wait in her van so no too-early bonding would occur. She had told me her daughter latches onto any man that comes around, and with us communicating almost every day for a bit more than the past month, I’m really her first “relationship” since her husband died over two years ago.
Once the baby sitter had gotten all the kids rounded up, my date and I went back to my hotel to change. Once we had taken turns changing (I didn’t fall asleep waiting on her this time), I checked out, and we went to have lunch at P.F. Chang’s, where my date was sure the horses outside were bigger than they were in Scottsdale when she visited with her late husband a few years ago. I had to let her down easily, though, with the realization that they were the same size. After that, we went to Border’s for some book shopping and talking about some of our interests, and we followed that up with some shoe shopping at DSW (she didn’t even know the store existed, although she’s BIG into shoes, so I knew she would want to know about it) so she’d know what to wear for swing dancing (I was telling her she needed to visit me in Dallas so I could take her dancing to one of my favorite places to go country and swing dancing).
Once our shopping desires were satisfied (actually, my painfully sunburned shins and ankles being enclosed in shoes were satisfied with the number of foot movements already required of them and were swelling), we took a long drive to the airport, talking along the way about some topics that were a little more deeper and reflective of the weekend than our earlier conversations. Since we couldn’t find a Starbucks on the way, we spent the rest of the time until I had to leave for my gate at 6:00 pm Sunday evening at the airport’s Starbucks.
So, that’s how my Disney World Romance Weekend went; on the following Wednesday, we decided, based on our respective reservations that we were not right for each other and decided to remain friends.
The following week, my date suggested I look up her church’s director of women and singles, who is herself single; since my date had a problem believing it possible for a never-married man to commit to a widowed mother of four (that was another one of her weird beliefs), she thought I would be better off with her recommendation.
I had assumed my original date had told her director about me, so I was very embarrassed when I had to explain to the director of women and singles how I learned about her. My exact words to my new contact were, “Have you ever been invited on a blind date and the other person wasn’t told about it? Well, I guess this is the Internet version of that!”
When my original date learned that I told the director of women and singles that I had met her through an Internet dating web site, she said I had betrayed her trust and that she never wanted to talk to me again. Needless to say, I was very flabbergasted by her words, but when I reflected on it further, I realized that I had noticed her having a similar attitude before and am now glad that we decided not to continue the relationship.
Well, with the fallout of “Hurricane Minnie” (my little nickname for the immature actions and beliefs of my original date), I’m not sure how things will go with the director or women and singles from her church, but I guess all I’ve really lost is the cost of a flight, hotel, meals, and other assorted costs, rather than the rest of my life, so I guess you could say it was a cheap date.
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