I was talking to Master Scalir tonight, and he reminded me of a "side story" which took place from the night I first met him, which was almost exactly 25 years ago.
In January 1991, I got a ride off the "ride board" to go from UCSB back to my parents' house. I didn't have a car there at the time. That's where I first met Ken Scalir, as he didn't drive (and still doesn't), so he happened to respond to the same "ride offered" ad as I did.
In the car with us were three girls. One was a pretty redhead who barely spoke. I don't remember her name. The driver, Allison, was a 22-year-old Jewish girl, who had a 17-year-old high school senior boyfriend (lol). The third female passenger was Allison's friend, named Amy. Amy was like 19 or 20, also Jewish. The redhead girl was very quiet, but the rest of us engaged in a lot of conversation throughout the 90 minute ride.
It didn't take long before I was clashing with Alison and Amy. They were fanatical, staunch feminists, and got offended by any speech which was even slightly politically incorrect. Allison was polite in her disagreement, but Amy got very obnoxious and confrontational, and I really disliked her.
About two months later, I was on the campus UNIX system, and somehow ended up in a "talk" (1-on-1 chat) conversation with another student there. It was a girl named Amy. As this was a fairly common name, I didn't even bother to think about the Amy I had met from the ride board. UNIX Amy was really cool, and we had a great conversation. We chatted for about 2 hours, and I really liked her. She told me several times during the conversation that she was really enjoying talking to me, and was so glad that we ended up chatting.
As this was all text (there was no such thing as the web back then), I couldn't see what she looked like. I was just about to ask for her phone number, and then she said something which made me realize that it was the same Amy I disliked from the ride board. This was a really unfortunate coincidence, as there were about 8,000 girls in the school, so the chance of this happening was pretty damn low. I wrote, "I think I just figured something out... we already know each other", and then told her who I was. Indeed, it was the same Amy, and she remembered me and our less-than-pleasant first experience with one another. I can't stress how disappointed I was to discover this.
Below are 4 choices as to what happened next. Only one of them is true. Vote above (in the poll) for which one you think is correct:
A) Given how well we got along in our chat, we both decided that we simply got off on the wrong foot in the car back in January. We agreed to put that behind us, and met up again. This time we got along much better, and proceeded to start dating. I wasn't all that attracted to her lookswise (she had a big nose), but I put that aside because of her great personality, and really was into her. We lasted about six months together, eventually breaking up because we were just too different. We are still friends, and in fact she's on my Facebook to this day.
B) We laughed off the whole first meeting thing, and decided to meet up again that evening. We ended up having sex, and for about a week were really into each other. Then we had the inevitable clashing again due to our very different political/social views, resulting in a nasty fight, and we never spoke again.
C) We got past the thing that occurred in the car, but the bottom line was that I still wasn't physically attracted to her, so I didn't want to push this toward a dating situation. Maybe she wasn't attracted to me, either (I obviously didn't want to bring up the subject), but I wanted to just be her friend, because I did like her personality once I had gotten to know her through the chat. We hung out a number of times until we both graduated, and then lost touch since then. Out of curiosity, I decided to look her up on Facebook two years ago, and found that she's married to another woman.
D) The mutual dislike from the car was so strong that even a great 2-hour chat wasn't enough to negate that. We both quickly ended the conversation, felt foolish, and never spoke again.
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Dan Druff
! (yeah, i know, you all are grateful for my keeping mum)