Story Submitted by Robert:

Miranda and I met online. She struck me as different from the vast majority of women who I encountered, mostly because she seemed very interested in me.  When I asked her what she wanted to do on a date, she said, "Something different from just a sit-down lunch. Think adventure."

It was a pretty open directive, as one person's adventurous is another person's tame. I picked out a local park trail to start and figured that I could always find something more adventurous if she requested it. When I mentioned the idea to her, she sounded excited about it.

When we made it to the park, though, she said, "I don't like walking on sticks and branches. It makes me feel like I'm walking on people's bones."

I glanced up and down at our intended path, and saw that it was strewn with dirt, sticks, and twigs. I asked her if she'd be okay walking on it, and she replied, "Probably not."

I said, "You might have mentioned it before, back when I suggested going for a nature walk."

She replied, "It might have been one of those paved nature walks. I didn't know."

I said, "Let's walk around the neighborhood instead."

We had a decent walk and came upon a dead end that had a basketball hoop and a basketball right next to it. I picked it up and dribbled it a bit. I asked her, "Want to shoot?"

She shuddered and said, "No. You don't know where that basketball's been.  A kid could've sneezed on it, or it could have been in the bathtub where a kid had an open cut. You don't know."

I put the basketball down and asked her, "What would you like to do? It seems that everything I suggest is too dangerous."

She said, as if it should have been obvious to me since the beginning, "Maybe lunch?"

I replied, "You told me before that you didn't want to go out for lunch."

She said, with that same exasperated tone, "I changed my mind! God!"

I took her out to a decent cafe. We sat in relative silence, as I didn't really know what to make of her volatile personality. Finally, she said, "We can go back there and shoot basketball if you buy a new basketball first."

"I don't want to buy a new basketball. There was a perfectly good one right there."

"But it was filthy. Do you want to play basketball or not?"

I said, "I had wanted to do something out of the ordinary or adventurous with you, but you won't even touch a used rubber ball. I think that we define adventurous differently."

She said, "I'm not stopping you. You can go back, play as much basketball as you want to, and die of dysentery for all I care."

"Thanks."

"Having lunch is a perfectly respectable adventure."

"It is."

I ended the date once the meal was over, and I actually did end up going back there and shooting some hoops. I'm not dead yet.

Posted in: Stories,Written by a Guy