On My Way

Submitted by Joanne:

Scott came up as a local match for me on a dating website, and we talked for a few weeks before deciding to plan a date at a local tea/coffee place.

I arrived there a few minutes early.  He called me to ask the place's address.  It was strange because he had already asked me where the place was over e-mail.

I waited and he called again ten minutes later to tell me that he was at the address, but there was just a house there on a residential street.  No sign of a coffee shop.  I asked him to make sure that he was at the right address, and he said that he was.  Athens, West Virginia.  That's fine.  Only I was in Athens, Ohio, about three and a half hours away.

I thought it was hysterical, but he didn't.  He asked me to wait there for him to drive up.  I told him that I wouldn't be doing that and that we could reschedule.  He asked me why I wouldn't wait, and I told him, for one, that the shop would be closed by the time he made it.  He asked me why I couldn't wait in the parking lot.

I told him that something about waiting until midnight for a guy in a parking lot was somehow unappealing.  He then said that he had driven a long way and wanted something to show for it.  I told him to buy a souvenir keychain.  He hung up, first telling me that he was going to come by the coffee place, closed or not, when he made it back to the right Athens.

I figured he was just a loon and wrote him off.  At one in the morning, though, I received a phone call from him, but opted not to take it.  He called about ten more times, and I declined the call each time.