3/22/2010

Leaving Some Room for the Holy Spirit

Submitted by Owen:

I met Kelly on Valentine's Day at a party when I was 16. We got along pretty well and were both kind of drunk so we fooled around for a while. She asked for my number and over the next week we talked a bit on the phone and made plans to have a date on Saturday. I hadn't dated a lot at this point in my life so I was really looking forward to it.

When we met up, she told me a pretty shocking story. She said that she had just run away from home that day. Her parents found out that she was talking to me on the phone and could see on the call display that my last name was very obviously not Jewish.

Apparently she was only allowed to date Jewish boys so they had a big fight and her parents forbade her to ever talk to me or see me. I asked why she hadn't told me any of this before and she said that she didn't want to ruin our date.
 
I was hoping in saying she had "run away" that she meant that she had just slipped out of the house for a few hours. But no. She told me that after our date she would have to find a new place to live. She then asked if she could come to my place for a few days.  Ummm, no. That would have been a little difficult to explain to my parents. 

Needless to say I was more than a little shocked by all of this. She had run away from home for me? A boy she barely knew. I was tempted to just tell her that she was nuts and just leave but I felt really bad for her. So I lied and said that although I thought that maybe we could have had something great that I believed family is the most important thing in life. And I couldn't live with myself if I came between her and her family. 
  
It took me about 20 minutes or so but I finally convinced her the best thing she could do was to go home and talk with her parents. I then told her that I thought it best we not see or talk to each other ever again. It would be too hard on me to communicate with her while knowing we could never really be together. She found that to be very romantic. 

We then had a very tearful goodbye, at least on her part. She said she would always be thinking of me, and I told her I would do likewise. For a while I did think about her a lot, but not in a good way.
 
 
*************************************

9 comments:

  1. Where does the holy spirit come into this story? Jews don't believe in a holy spirit. They just kill messiahs.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Can we have some grown up stories here? Really, dating when you're living with your parents shouldn't count for this site.

    ReplyDelete
  3. OP - you sound like you were a very mature 16 year old and what you did was a very nice thing for that girl.

    @9:38 - nice Anti-Semitic comment. You're what's wrong with this world.

    ReplyDelete
  4. @9:59

    I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that 9:38 was using a little known rhetorical device called "sarcasm".

    ReplyDelete
  5. OP- Nice job taking that chick's insane impulse, making a smart decision on how to proceed and then translating your decision into insane language she could understand. Overall a smart move on your part and nicely done.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I kinda feel bad for the girl. she's obviously not as religously inclined as her parents and they were forcing their religion on her. Her running away just to see this guy was over the top, but it was clearly the culmination of a problem she had had with her parents for a while (with a fair splodge of teenage angst thrown in).

    The OP definitely handled this well and maturely, but don't build up too bad an image of the girl. We don't know much about her situation.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Why did you think this was an interesting story?

    ReplyDelete
  8. @12:11
    It was an interesting story. It was your comment that was lame.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I dunno. I think Kelly wanting to run away because of Owen (the OP) was kind of romantic (we ARE talking about TEENS here). Maybe they were just acquaintances, but acquaintances with the potential to become romantic partners, and Kelly thought Owen was worth getting to know and her folks wouldn't even give her a chance to get to know him and see if a love spark would grow. So, I guess one person's "out to lunch" is another person's "oh, so romantic."

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.

Content Policy

A Bad Case of the Dates reserves the right to publish or not publish any submitted content at any time, and by submitting content to A Bad Case of the Dates, you retain original copyright, but are granting us the right to post, edit, and/or republish your content forever and in any media throughout the universe. If Zeta Reticulans come down from their home planet to harvest bad dating stories, you could become an intergalactic megastar. Go you!

A Bad Case of the Dates is not responsible for user comments. We also reserve the right to delete any comments at any time and for any reason. We're hoping to not have to, though.

Aching to reach us? abadcaseofthedates at gmail dot com.