Polite Dissent

During my second year of medical school I decided to make more an effort to be social. To that end, I had decided to attend the annual medical school Halloween party. It was held at the VFW in one of the smaller St. Louis suburbs (Each of our parties seemed to be held at a different VFW. Allegedly we made such a mess that we were never allowed back at the previous ones).

I had thrown together a costume at the last minute and dressed as Willie Nelson. I bought a cheap red wig and braided it into long ponytails. I dusted it with some gray and white paint to add some age. I trimmed the ends of the braids to get enough hair to make a matching beard which I attached with spirit gum. With some cardboard and aluminum foil I made a huge belt buckle. With my cowboy boots, a horrid plaid shirt and a baseball cap that I had scrawled “Farm Aid” on, my costume was complete.

The VFW was hopping. A DJ was playing some decent dance music and there was an open bar. Everywhere you looked there were medical students in cheap costumes and a slightly maniacal look in there eyes.

I was standing in the fairly long line for the bar and had just made it to the front of the line. A girl dressed as a hippy came up and asked if I could grab her a beer. Being the gentleman that I am, I grabbed one for both of us. I handed her the beer and we spent the next hour or so talking. Her name was Lisa and she was a nurse at the university hospital. She and her nursing friends made it a point of attending most of the medical school parties.

As her friends dragged her off to another party, I realized that I should have gotten her number. I asked the bartender for a pen and some paper and he found an ancient pencil I could use. I ran out the door of the VFW after her to get her number and bumped into her coming back in to give me her number. Phone numbers were exchanged and things were looking good.

A few days later, some friends of mine decided to attend The Nightmare Before Christmas. They asked if I wanted to go. I agreed and thought that this seemed to be the perfect excuse to ask Lisa out. I called her up and she agreed, saying that she had heard it was a good movie. She gave me her address and I told her I’d pick her up in couple of hours.

I showered, shaved and got dressed. I didn’t want to be too dressy or too informal so I decided on the medical students informal uniform: dockers and a button down shirt. I put on my one nice pair of shoes and went outside to clean the car. I pulled up to the dumpster next to the apartment building so I could quickly clean it out. When I’m busy at work or school, junk tends to accumulate in my car (lecture notes, mail, magazines, medical journals, etc.), and I needed to empty it out so I could make a good impression. I opened the passenger side door of my old Tercel and started throwing out the accumulation a handful at a time.

Then I heard a very distinctive “ching” sound and realized that I had just thrown my car keys in the dumpster. Damn! Luckily the container was mostly empty, but I still had to jump in after them, wade across the dumpster and sift through about a foot of trash until I found them.

I ran up to my apartment to quickly change clothes and wash up. I was already running late, so I just grabbed the nearest pair of shoes and ran back to my car. I only had the one pair of good shoes, so I ended up in a slightly beat up pair of athletic shoes. I headed across town to the (much nicer than mine) apartment complex where she lived. Driving up and down the streets, I simply could not find her apartment. After about ten minutes of looking, I talked to a passerby and discovered that she lived not in apartment 1430, but in apartment 1430 ½, around the back of the main building.

I knocked on the door of the building.

“Come on in!” she yelled. “I’m almost ready.”

I opened the door and her dog, a giant Samoyed, made a lunge at me. I dodged and spun, but he kept coming after me.

“Prince! Stop that!” She shouted at the dog, but the giggle she added at the end didn’t suggest any real discipline. By now, he had stopped chasing me and seemed to have decided that I looked like a fire hydrant. He closed in, sniffed, and then raised his hind leg.

“I’ll wait for you outside.” I hurriedly said as I slipped out the door and away from Prince. Lisa came outside a minute later, nicely dressed in skirt and blouse. She smiled at me, but I swear I saw the smile falter a little bit when she got a look at my shoes.

We hopped in my little Toyota and headed to the theater. We made it just as the movie was starting but luckily my friends had saved us some good seats.

Five minutes after the movie started, her cell phone rang. She grabbed it and started a whispered conversation with one of her nurse pals. After receiving some dirty glares from the people around us in the theater, she headed to the back of the theater to finish her conversation. In a few minutes, she plopped back down in her seat. Just then, her phone rang again and once more she retreats to the back of the theater. This process of phone call migration continued for the rest of the movie.

After the movie, my friends were heading over to Cyrano’s where they served this absolutely sinful creampuff with ice cream and fudge sauce dessert that was famous across town. I asked Lisa if she wanted to go, knowing that nobody said no to a dessert at Cyrano’s, but she declined. She added in an aggrieved tone that she needed to go back home and feed her dog.

I drove her home and parked in front of her building. I got out of the car and walked over to the passenger side of the car to let her out. She hadn’t waited for me, however, and was already striding to her door. “‘Night,” she called out as she walked in her apartment and (I assume) securely locked her door.

I think it’s safe to say that that remains my worst date ever. I’ve never been entirely certain what went wrong. I have a few guesses. First, I suspect that she found me more attractive dressed as Willie Nelson. Second, I have a strong suspicion that she preferred more affluence in her dates, apparently forgetting that the vast majority of medical students (including me) live below the poverty line. Plus, I think the shoes may have done me in.

Epilogue: Two years later as I was starting my final year of medical school, I stopped by the “Welcome New Students” reception thrown by the school at a local bar. I grabbed a Bud Light and met up with one of my friends. We saw another friend of ours and headed over to talk to him. He was chatting with this bevy of cute girls and he introduced us to them. The last one, of course, was Lisa. She fixed me with a chilly stare and, with the icicles dripping from her words, said, “We’ve met.” I could only laugh.