I had no idea what I was getting into. I went to order dinner in the food court—chicken sandwich, naturally—and accidentally got a date. Kind of. What happened was, as I was waiting for my order, a guy walked up to me and was like “so, wanna have a dinner date right now?” (Those were his exact words.)
I’m not one to refuse what will either become a friendship at best or a story at worst, so I was like “uh, sure.” and went to eat my chicken with a random man I just met. If this had taken place anywhere that wasn’t a well-lit, extremely populated, dinner-hour-in-the-college-food-court, I wouldn’t have gone. As it was, there was certainly an element of facing my fears.
It took about five seconds for the conversation to swerve into HAHAHA, WTF territory. At first it was the usual: “what’s your major?” I said pre-animation. He heard it as “Supreme Animation,” which would have been way funnier if he didn’t immediately prove that he wasn’t from this planet.
🚩 He was an entrepreneurship major. (This isn’t necessarily a red flag, but given the further context, it most CERTAINLY was.)
This is where things IMMEDIATELY got extremely weird.
He first told me very casually that he’s not a BYU student, he just likes the food here. (We are in a food court. It was literally Chick-Fil-A.) Ok sure, that’s not weird at all, surely he’s normal—”
“Yeah, I’m hoping to have an exit strategy of 50 million.” All I could think to say back was, “oh, uh, cool.”
You know, people are allowed to have goals. I won’t begrudge that.
“Have you ever seen the Sound of Freedom?” (🚩) His eyes glaze over and he looks past his chicken and into his past. “So good. I cried. I think it’s my favorite movie.” (🚩🚩🚩)
I could sense where this conversation was going and I was not into it.
“Yeah…my plan is to retire with a ton of money so I can play cop, you know? Like, if God wants me to be a billionaire, I’m going to use that to save the world.” (🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩)
“My entrepreneur professor taught me that. He taught me to stop being afraid of money. Not if I can use it to save people from human trafficking.” (🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩)
He didn’t mean in a making-policies way, he fully meant becoming a Mission Impossible action hero thanks to his money and desire to be a cop.
When he sensed that this didn’t quite instill the sense of awe in me that he thought it might, (I have an uncanny ability for specific conservatives to think I’m one of them, only to be shocked that I have zero interest in politics) he then moved onto strategy B:
“I’m going to the gym after this. That’s why I’m dressed like this, could you tell?”
His outfit was a white t shirt and grey sweat shorts. Combined with his gold chain necklace (🚩🚩🚩) I just assumed he was one of those guys who dresses like that. Seeing that this (again) failed to impress me, he moved to his final strategy:
“Everyone says I look like my biological father. I’ve never met him though. People just say he’s handsome. I’m on acutane. It makes my face really dry, and also I think it makes me like, manic. I’ve been talking to so many people recently. I think it’s making me more extroverted. It’s crazy…and I got sleep paralysis this one time from it, but that could’ve been from watching The Exorcist.”
At this point, I was entirely lost. Whatever Bizarro Robot Man had found me had gained a glitch in his programming. He was now spouting nonsense, surely! No human being would be flying through topics this quickly. (I had gotten in about four words this entire time, for the record.)
He then warned me to never watch The Exorcist because it would invite demons into my home, and he heard that people died on set from filming such a demonic movie. (At this point, I was convinced that my skeleton had gotten up and run home without me, which is why I wasn’t backflipping out of my chair that very second.)
I decided not to press why he was allowed to watch The Exorcist but I wasn’t, and then swallowed my fruit cup at the speed of light.
After a solid minute of eye contact while he watched me gather my trash, he finally went “Well, I’m gonna go.” And drifted away, leaving me baffled.
A note for lovely gentlemen everywhere: if a girl’s reaction to your (I think??) advances is to jump up and practically run to her apartment because “I gotta tell my blog about this!!”…it did not go the way you were expecting.
That said, I’m grateful for the interesting experience anyway. Dinner was going to be a lonely affair involving myself and no one else, so having the surprise guest appearance of the first alien to mimic human speech was welcome either way.
Goodnight everyone! And to this man: Good luck getting back to your home planet.
November 27, 2023
Leave a Reply