The night of my first date, my Uncle Peter's in town. So the family goes out to dinner first and I bolt early to make my date. I steal a cute tiny flower arrangement flower off the table and drive to Alyson's. Hm, only 10 minutes away. Nice.

I ring the bell, present the flower and we're off. We went out for coffee at Jitterz, a trendy coffee place. It was nice, a little loud (jazz music going, yeah trendy) but we talked.

Then, lost for things to do, I took her home to meet the fam. Yes, on the first date (really didn't have much planned besides coffee). She handled it admirably which really really impressed me since my family can be pretty scary.

Later she told me that she thought "segue" was the coffee place I was suggesting we go.

It's funny that this story has the fewest hard details since it spanned the most time and had the most events. But they seem to meld together in my head.

So now, I was pretty excited about this whole Alyson relationship. Shuit asked me one day, "So what do you think of Alyson? Cute, right?"

"She's great. A little pudgy, but that's ok."

Next phone conversation with Alyson, I'm talking about something or another but basically leading to how I think she's really cool and Alyson says… "But I'm a little pudgy, right?" All hopes of dating this girl fly out of my ear onto the floor with most of my brain. I can't really muster any excuse for my comment. Really, my only response was a weak, "So, uh, John told you, huh?" Of course he did.