3/22/2013

Better Plate Than Never

Story Sent in by Ty:

It was my first time over at Ashley's apartment and she set the kitchen table with fancy wine glasses, silverware, and fine china plates.

She served salmon and steamed spinach and mushrooms. After thanking her for cooking and inviting me over, we dug in.

I had eaten maybe three bites of food when she stood up from the table and said, "You know what?" then opened a nearby cabinet and pulled out a standard ceramic dinner plate. She lifted my china plate, dumped my food onto the new plate, and put the new, not-as-fancy plate in front of me.

She set the china plate on the counter and sat back down, giving me a smile.

I asked her, "What was that about?"

She said, "I just want to keep the china safe. No offense."

I pointed out, "But you're eating off it."

"It's my china. I can do what I want with it."

Indeed, she could. I was a bit miffed, but swallowed the annoyance and continued my meal.

A little more than halfway through it, we were talking about a forthcoming golf outing (we both liked to play) when she stood, opened up a drawer by her sink, pulled out a white paper plate, took my ceramic plate, and right before my eyes, dumped the remainder of my food onto the paper plate and set it before me.

"What the hell?" I asked her, "Why didn't you just set the table with paper plates to begin with?"

She got upset. "I wanted you to see the nice china, but I didn't think you'd actually eat off of it. I thought you'd say, 'Thanks for setting the table with nice plates, but let's not risk breaking them.'"

"I'd never say that."

"Why not?"

I said, "I like eating off nice plates."

"Well, sorry. You don't get a nice plate, here."

We finished dinner, she on her fine china, me on my sturdy paper. I thanked her for the meal, and I bid her, her plates, and her obsession with said plates a nice life.

14 comments:

  1. Weird and rude. But indeed, she can do what she wants with her plates no matter how obsessive or impolite :[

    ReplyDelete
  2. Mysteriously, the plate changes coincided with OP rubbing his bagpipes on the rim of the plate.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Not paper. No. China. Fine China. The fine China we never use. We never, never use it. Never, never, never.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I think she was being passive-aggressive. Every time he said something that displeased her, she downgraded his plate status. LOL...

    If it was simply a question of protecting the china, then why give him a paper plate after the 'regular' plate?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Chunky Horse has fine china, too. Except His are made from human skulls...

    ReplyDelete
  6. Ashley is one of those Joan Crawford-esque women who I can't stand. They're impressed by crap like "fine china" so they think others are too but no one is good enough to touch or use their fancy crap. Straight men rarely comment on that kind of thing unless you explain the supposed importance of it.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Chunky Horse has fine china, too. Except His are made from human skulls...


    I love how you capitalized "His" as if Chunky Horse is some sort of divine entity who demands that sort of respect. Hmmmmm....is He?

    ReplyDelete
  8. ^ But of course! :-)

    I beseech Him to make me His disciple. Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto Chunky Horse the things that are Chunky Horse's.

    ReplyDelete
  9. LOL! Loved this story! Wish she had kept going:
    Not the actual silverware, here's some flatware.
    Not the flatware, here's a plastic fork.
    Not the dining table, here's a coffee table.
    Not the coffee table, here's the floor.

    I'm on board with Steve's comment about her using this as a passive-aggressive move every time the OP said something she didn't like. Can you imagine what his food looked like after being dumped onto two different plates?

    ReplyDelete
  10. I just started wishing that the emotionally disturbed people in these stories could be marked as a warning to any future daters.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Lol. Never the fine china. Never.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Unless the OP was behaving like a toddler who doesn't know better than to slam down silverware on his plate or doing something else that made her worry that her fragile china was in imminent danger, her behavior was very bizarre.

    ReplyDelete
  13. if I was you op, I would have got up snatch both those plates and her plate and broke em! and would have said eat off that fool!!!!!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  14. This chick had some delusional belief that the OP should tell her "oh honey, don't use your good china, its too nice to mess up" whereas normal people would feel she was just tryiing to make a good impression on a date. And like someone else did, she was downgrading him via plates when he didn't respond to what she wanted.

    My question is why after she moved your food, did you discuss a golfing out with her? When she said "It's my china. I can do what I want with it" I would have suggested she stick it where the sun doesn't shine and left.

    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.