7/14/2010

Dare to Be Stupid

Submitted by Alexandra:

I had made the apparent mistake of writing "hiking" as an interest in my Internet profile.  For some reason, guys really seem to gravitate towards that.  I received messages like, "Hey, I like hiking, too. We should go on a hike together.  You know, just us," and "Hiking means that you're adventurous.  Are you adventurous in other ways, too?  JK, LOL.  Are you, though?"

These, of course, were ignored.  However, when Jeff wrote me, he seemed like a genuinely nice guy, and the very fact that he didn't mention anything even subtly implying sex (as far as I could tell) made me curious about him.

He asked me where I hiked around the area, and then asked if I had ever been to a place nearby called Hell's Canyon.  I hadn't been there, and he offered to take me there before lunch some weekend.

Despite the fact that he had offered to take me in broad daylight, I asked him if we could save it for another time.  For a first date, I liked the idea of keeping it simple.  Just lunch and seeing how things went.  He liked the idea.

Lunch was at a local diner-type place.  We sat down, and I noticed fairly quickly that something about him was a little off.  For starters he inserted the word, "daring" into almost each of his sentences:

"Meeting anyone in the real world from online is a little daring."

"I like to travel.  I've been to Canada.  I'm daring."

"These eggs are delicious.  Dare to try them."

At one point, after a lull in conversation, he said, "I can fill a coffee cup with urine from over ten feet away."

I took it as a joke and started to laugh, but he stared at me, dead serious.  I replied, "That's pretty daring."

Other than these quirks, he seemed like a decent guy.  When he asked me if I wanted to just drive by Hell's Canyon after lunch, I said that I'd do it, but that I wanted to take separate cars.

It was a bit further away than I thought it would be, but once we made it there, he parked and asked me if I would go just a little way in with him.  There was an easy in/easy out path with a cliff that looked over a forest.

I told him that I was afraid of heights.  He said that I didn't have to go close to the edge.

We made it to the overhang and he went to the edge, himself.  He looked over it and called back to me that I really should come and look with him.  I repeated that I didn't care for heights, and he promised that he'd prevent anything from happening to me.

Thinking, stupidly, that this was a good opportunity to demonstrate trust, I made my way, slowly, to where he stood.

I crept closer to the edge of the cliff and looked down, over the trees.  It was a beautiful sight, but I could feel my heart racing, and I retreated from the edge.

At least I tried to, because Jeff was standing less than a foot away, right behind me, blocking me.  I turned to look at him.  He smiled, grabbed my back, and made as if to push me over.

I screamed bloody, dripping murder and flailed, landing a solid crack to his face.  He pulled me back.

"Saved your life!" he said.

I could barely hear him over the ringing in my ears, and when I looked at him again, he was rubbing his face.  "What was that for?" he asked.

I stammered, "You... you pushed me!  You know I'm afraid of heights!"

He rolled his eyes and said, "Where's your sense of adventure?" and he then stepped towards me, grabbed my shoulders, and made as if to push me off again.

This time, I landed my fist right on his ear, and would've grabbed his neck if he didn't let go.  He did.

Instead of waiting around for an explanation, I scrambled up the embankment.  He held his ear and was shouting expletives over and over.

The caring part of me would have stuck around to see if I had really hurt him, but I realized that he'd probably take advantage of that and make to push me off the cliff again, now that he knew how much I didn't like it.  I wouldn't have put it past him.

I hurried down the path, back to my car, climbed in, and drove off.

He called my cell.  I let it go to voicemail.  He called again, and then three times more.

When I made it home, I called one of my friends, who came by and listened to Jeff's voicemails with me:

"I locked my keys in my car!  You have to come back here and wait with me!"

"You bitch!  I can't hear out of my ear!  And I locked my keys in my car!  Get back here and help me get them out!"

"I locked my keys in my car!  It's going to be nighttime soon!  My ear hurts and you have to come back here and get my keys out of my car!"

It wasn't even noon yet.  I deleted each of his messages, and hung out with my friend, instead.

28 comments:

  1. Hooray! A bad case of the almost getting thrown off a cliffs! I reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally wanna hear this awful date from his POV.

    "And then she didn't even pick up the phone when I called to tell her that I was bleeding from the ear and had locked my keys in the car! Sadly, I was too stupid and disoriented to think about calling AAA or the police, so I just spent the time beating off until some hikers came and helped me jimmy the lock open."

    Question though: Why did you say that you got "lunch" with him, then went on your scary hike, then mention that it wasn't even noon yet when he left the voicemails? The timing of it all seems really off. I think you had what others call "breakfast." Hell, I'll even give you "brunch," if it was quick.

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  2. If this story is true, then that's pretty scary. No offense, but you should be more careful or you'll probably get yourself killed by the next online date you meet up with.

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  3. You're right. It was probably closer to brunch.

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  4. Situations to never put yourself in: this one. I don't care how hard up you are for a date, you don't go to "Hell's Canyon" with a strange guy who doesn't seem quite right.

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  5. Uhm, isn't freaking people that are scared of heights out by pretending to push them something everyone does? Maybe not a second time, but this dude seems pretty normal apart from the "daring" thing.

    To me it seems OP overreacted quite a bit here with the punching him in the ear and driving off thing.

    Oh, and
    "When I made it home, I called one of my friends, who came by and listened to Jeff's voicemails with me:" - that sounds pretty lame.

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  6. @11:37

    Yes, it is something everyone does, but not over a goddamned cliff and not an hour after meeting them for the first time. Also, I guarantee your girlfriend does not appreciate it no matter when and how you do it (if you have one, that is).

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  7. Again, I must make the case that everyone you meet online is a serial killer (this includes you Nikki ;P ). He really wanted you to come up to the edge and look over to see the bodies of the other eight girls he had already pushed to their death. I think the moment you should have been hit over the head with the CLUE bat was when a stranger offers to take you to a place called "Hell's Canyon".

    But seriously though, glad you had the good sense to defend yourself and get out of there before he threw you over a cliff.

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  8. Does anybody write real sh!7 ANY more?

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  9. Seven-thirty7/14/2010 2:52 PM

    This certainly seemed more realistic than the stuffed elephant vivisectionist date. One thing is for certain, Jeff is not the sort of guy who would sleep on the wetspot... and the OP is not the sort of girl who would either.

    There are so many guns in America now, one would expect some of these bad dates to end more violently. He pretended to push me over the cliff so I whipped out my 9mm pistol and sent him to eternity or she tried to tie me to a bloodstained table with twine, so I shot her down... not enough adventure.

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  10. Say it with me now, 1:00pm: SHIT. You can spell it out like a big boy, yes you can!

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  11. Hey, Architect, it can't count as serial killing if you've only ever killed one person! ...and half a dozen midgets. They don't count as real people, right? Like, for the purposes of serial killer classifications? Right...?

    And Seven-Thirty, I would hope that if someone shot his/her internet date, they'd have the good sense not to incriminate themselves by posting about it here. Despite the fact that he's more celibate than most priests, Jared does NOT guarantee confidentiality for criminals.

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  12. @ Nikki - No, no, you're fine on the midgets. Everyone knows they aren't real people.

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  13. @04:02. Who asked you?

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  14. Am I the only one who finds it odd he said "saved your life" after being hit in the ear THEN react to being punched in the face?

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  15. ^ Yeah, I noticed that, too. "Hahahahaha! Teeheehee! Ouch, bitch; WTF is your problem?!"

    I'd like to know how he expected the OP to help get his car keys out of his locked car. Did he expect her to magically unlock the door with psychic powers or what?

    -Baku-chan

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  16. Psychics can't unlock doors. They can only have intuitions as to when someone will come by and unlock them for him.

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  17. Seven-thirty7/15/2010 5:03 AM

    Does ABCOD contact the police about crime? Well, Nikki, if you read carefully there are many confessions of criminal behavior in the stories. Drug use, theft, kidnapping, tampering with witnesses, assault, etc have all come up. Tresspassing and prostitution are ABCOD bread and butter.

    If a policeman had been present during the too close to the cliff punch incident, (s)he might have found grounds to arrest one, the other or both, depending.

    Of course Jared can actually Google and Facebook contributors... wow, people trust him not to blackmail them.

    Celibacy gives its practioners extra time to hand out on the Internet.

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  18. I don't know. I think there's a world of difference between writing into an internet blog about how you murdered someone in cold blood and about that time that you gave a dude a blow job just to get home. (God, I wish I knew who she was so I could make sure she never lives that down!) You're right that a lot of criminal or borderline criminal behavior pops up on this site frequently, but really...I guess I just draw the line at murder. Hrm. That's my line. Go figure.

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  19. Seven-thirty, you're going to have to realize one day that not everything you read on the internet is true. I know; shocking, right?

    The police realize this too.

    I mean hell, I'm smoking crack while torturing an underaged prostitute as I type this. She'll probably die, but that just makes her squirm less when I rape her. Tee hee!

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  20. @OP - It would have been an awesome end to the story if you had pulled off a sweet judo throw and sent him hurtling to his untimely demise. Why doesn't anyone judo throw people off of cliffs anymore? *sigh*

    @Nikki - I'd think by now your hope in the good sense of ABCotD contributors would be totally and completely destroyed.

    @Anon9:23 - Oh, is that YOU? Do me a favor and close the basement door or something. I can smell your crack smoke all the way up here on the third floor. At least the screaming has finally died down.

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  21. ^Become more intelligible please, or else your comments will be cast aside into the "retarded teenage troll" pile.

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  22. It's called an opinion....not being a troll. I always find JD's comments are so negative.

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  23. ...and the fact that my mom is so tight and you have a little pin dick doesn't hurt either.

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  24. Pete, not sure you want to let the world know that you're intimately familiar with the tightness of your mother's anal cavity, but ok.

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  25. The scary thing is that I've met people who were so socially awkward that they would latch onto "schemes" that would flawlessly and in short time make them the hero of the situation. Awkward to the point where they would instantly concoct another situation RIGHT AFTER the situation that just happened. For example this guy may not have locked his keys in the car but said so just to get her back, then smiled and said, "Ha! I was kidding, but you came back for me. I like that."

    Basically imagine a narcissistic, violent, version of Michael Scott age 12. On angel dust. They exist folks.

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  26. Seven-thirty7/15/2010 6:07 PM

    9:23 Fact or fiction? Even Jared doesn't know in all cases.

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  27. YAAAAAAAAAYY ANGEL DUST!!

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  28. @Nikki

    I want to know who she is, so I can become her personal driver!

    :D

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