Once upon a time (this is a true story but I wanted to start out with “once upon a time” for more panache) somewhere between the time frame of my first and last marriage (there have only been two so don’t lump me in the multiple marriage category as Elizabeth Taylor, okay?  Thanks.) my dad set me up on a blind date.  The reason that this blind date is so fantastical is because my dad lives up in Wisconsin where he freezes his butt off nine months out of the year and I live in Louisiana where I sweat my ass off nine months out of the year.  My dad wanted me to be happy since my first marriage was a complete disaster.  He thought he could show his little girl what a good relationship looked like (this after coming out of a 25 year marriage to my mother due to an affair and then getting engaged to another lady while still living with the woman of the affair, well, we all have our faults).

 My dad looked through his old college yearbook, or maybe it was an alumni magazine, and found someone that lived in Louisiana.  This person had a son that was roughly my age.  When I say “roughly” I mean that the son was fifteen years my senior.  I was twenty-seven preparing to go out with a forty-two year old.  When my dad told me what he did, I knew I should have been thankful and grateful for the support he was showing his now single daughter but I couldn’t help but roll that number around in my head.  I remember waking up to forty pink flamingos in the front yard when my dad turned forty.  I was in middle school.  Back then I thought forty was just a few steps away from the grave. 

 Now, granted, I had changed my views on the age when I turned twenty-five since a lot of the people that I worked with were well into their forties and fifties.  Oprah herself said that forty was the new twenty (or was it fifty was the new thirty? They both translate to the same thing, right?) so I thought I was kind of hot stuff for being set up with an older man.  Because my dad thought to set me up with this particular person, a person that he didn’t even know mind you, meant a lot to me.  This meant that my dad finally acknowledged the fact that I’d grown up.  This meant that he would let me have a glass of wine the next time we sat down to dinner together.  This meant that he knew I wouldn’t drop my panties at the drop of a hat.  Finally I was grown up in my dad’s eyes.

 How my dad got his old classmate’s son (I’m assuming it was a classmate and not a professor that my dad contacted) to buy off on going out with a complete stranger is beyond me.  I’m hoping no money was involved because that would make me, well, that wouldn’t make me anything since I wasn’t the one that got paid and nothing like that happened.  Maybe this guy got paid, maybe he didn’t.  I think he was finishing up with a messy divorce that had no children involved but something more precious.  Money, lots and lots of money that she ended up getting leaving him with nothing except the shirt (and hair) on his back.  Oh, he also got a date with me. 

 My dad gave the guy my number with my permission and told me that this guy (we’ll call him Moe) was going to call me within the week.  As soon as I hung up with my dad my phone immediately started ringing.  It was Moe.  Moe was pleasant enough for being thrust into something I’m sure he didn’t really want to do in the first place.  He explained that my dad gave me his number (I didn’t know if I was supposed to play dumb to this fact to I just went with it and acted surprised that my dad would do something so thoughtful for me).  Moe said he would love to take me to dinner if I wasn’t busy any time in the near future.  I used to hate it when guys asked me out and didn’t give me a specific time they had in mind so I would always feel obligated to say, “Sure, I’m not busy for the next, oh, I don’t know, sixty years so when ever is good for you is good for me…”

 I told Moe that I’d go out with him and asked him what he had in mind.  He wanted to spend an afternoon in New Orleans getting to know me and then we’d have drinks and “maybe dinner if things went well”.  Okay, thanks for maybe making plans with me and leaving yourself with a bail out plan.  You know, just in case I suck.

 “Is Saturday okay with you?” I asked him feeling like I was supposed to be the one who decided when this whole thing was going to happen.

 “How about the Saturday after next?” he suggested.  Why would he want to schedule a date so far in advance?  Weird.

 “Um…let me see if I’m busy…” I rustled some pages in a magazine around so it sounded like I actually had a calendar or date book or something important to check.  “Nope, I’m free.”

 “Great.  This Saturday would have been okay but when my dad asked me to take one of his old buddies’ daughters out I decided to have a little, ahem, procedure done.”

 Oh dear lord, I thought, he’s scheduled himself a vasectomy.  “Right,” I said trying to think of a really great excuse to both get off the phone and cancel the date that I’d just agreed to.  The only thing I could think of to accomplish both things was choke on a sandwich right then and there but I didn’t want to appear to be too Mama Cass because after all I still felt the pressure to impress this guy.

 “Okay, well I’ll meet you in Jackson Square around noon, okay?” I blurted out before I changed my mind completely.

 The day of the date I made sure to tell several people where I was going and if they hadn’t heard from me by the next morning to send out the dogs looking for me.  I even told a couple of my friends what I was going to be wearing and my blood type, you know, just in case.  I met Moe in the square at noon.  He was nicely dressed and seemed appropriately nervous about meeting me.  He had a wonderfully warm smile.  The only thing that was even slightly odd about him was the way he wore his ball cap.  I’m used to guys pulling their hats snuggly on their heads.  Moe’s hat was more perched on his head like an old lady who didn’t want to squish her hair.  I let it go and decided that I would make the best of the afternoon.

 I actually found that I was having a good time with this guy who I was really worried about meeting because of his age and the fact that I had never been on a blind date before.  We took a guided tour of the French Quarter and had several haunted houses pointed out to us.  We had lunch at the Gumbo Shoppe and headed over to Pat O’Brien’s for some hurricanes.  This guy was sweet and funny, he was a bit more nervous that I was used to being around but it really didn’t bother me. 

 “So, um, I want to tell you about that procedure,” Moe said as our second hurricane was being served.

 “Oh, no!” I said waving my hand in front of him trying to brush away his words before they could spill out of his mouth.  “You don’t have to tell me what you had done!” I was already starting to sweat.  I really didn’t want to hear about his vasectomy. 

 “No, I really feel like I should tell you because this date is what gave me a reason to do it.  I’d been looking for a reason for years but couldn’t justify it.”  I didn’t notice the he took off his hat.

 “Really,” I stammered.  “You don’t have to tell me anything.  I have to get home tonight.  I told my friends I’d call them when I got home.  I didn’t even bring a toothbrush.”

 “I got hair plugs.”

 I choked on my own spit.  Oh, right.  Right.  I felt so stupid.  Moe bent his head down so I could see his new hairline.  It looked like my hairline.  I always thought that hair plugs or implants would look like doll heads with the sprouts of hair coming from one hole but Moe’s head looked normal.  He wanted me to touch it.  Tenderly I reached up and brushed at his hair afraid if I did it too roughly the new growth would come out in my hands.  He explained to me that eventually the hair would grow just like normal.  I sat back and breathed a sigh of relief.

 I thought I was going over board for getting ready for our date when I bought a new thing of blush.  Moe actually had surgery for it.  He’d been wanting the procedure done for a long time and I’m assuming that doing this gave him a boost of self confidence and I’m all about that.  If he needed to use me for the catalyst for a new perspective on life I’m so cool with being the scapegoat!