Unbroken Glass

This guy was original, I’ll give him that. He had a very special surprise for me all planned out. Not the kind of surprises we girls like, though.

It was my second shidduch. I had been frum for about a year, and I was nineteen.
An innocent, still.
I went out with an Israeli guy a little older than me. He was really an awesome guy, we had a good time together. We talked a lot and he was fun to be with, clever and interesting and funny and all those wonderful things.

We went out once. I agreed to go out again.
The second date was even better.
Now the third date was interesting.

He took me to some kever in Jerusalem to daven mincha, and me with all that baal teshuva inspiration… it was all very holy.
We got back into the car, both of us glowing. He started driving, and we were talking casually; he said to me – So what do you think, do you see a future here?
I said, Of course.
Why else was I going out with him?
A future, to me, is short-term still at that point. I see about as far as the beginning of the next meeting. And he really was great.
Of course I wanted to see him again.
He smiled.
I smiled.
He continued driving.
Straight past my seminary, in fact.
And onto the highway.

We drove for a while, both of us silent. It was a comfortable silence.
All of a sudden I realised that we were on the way to Tel Aviv, and I said to him, ‘So tell me, where are you taking me?’
I thought maybe he wanted to go to the beach, take a walk on the sand, see the sunset. How sweet, I thought.
He looked over and smiled. ‘To Tel Aviv.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘How come?’
Well everybody’s waiting, he replied. My Rav is there, and all the guys from yeshiva. To do a le’chaim.
Excuse me? I said, Calmly.
To the vort, he said. All confidence and glowing energy.
Stop the car, I said.
He looked at me questioningly.
Stop the car, I repeated. Now.
He hit the brakes and pulled over.
Now get out, I ordered him.
He got out, bemused but still pretty sure that we were headed towards the vort.

I phoned my Rabbi. In hysterics.
He told me it was as fine to be as insanely angry as I was. It was pretty much all I needed to hear.
The boy got the picture very quickly after that.

There was no vort.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 30th, 2002 at 4:54 pm and is filed under Favourites, She. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.