Unbroken Glass

How many of your friends is your evening’s date supposed to meet before you end up having coffee?

In my beginning stages of teshuva, when I was just starting out on the wonderful world of shidduchim, all I knew was that NO ONE was allowed to know who you were going out with, where, when and why.
I was very very discreet about it all, and when my shadchan phoned me to tell me he had a new guy, I made all the plans and arrangements without telling anyone.
My friends asked me why I was getting dressed up, ‘Are you going on a shidduch by any chance?’
And me, a mixture of panic and fake-chilled-out, why-do-I-LOOK-like-I’m-going-on-a-shidduch face… said a little too loudly, ‘Nowhere, nowhere, why?!’
I was very stressed out about those kinds of things then.

But I had one friend, who was even newer than I, who I really liked, and also – she had a car. So I told her ‘in the strictest confidence’ that I was going to meet a guy and I needed a ride in her car.

We drove to the hotel lobby where we had agreed to meet, Or at least where I thought we agreed to meet.
I explained to her that she could not, under any circumstances, tell anyone where I was.
She dropped me off and I waited for him.
And waited.
Apparently he was under the impression that he was suppose to pick me up from my flat.
So he waited.
And waited.

Finally he decided to take matters into his own hands and knocked on my door to see where I was and why am I taking so long.
Now, this new girl WHO HAD JUST TAKEN ME TO MEET HIM wasnt in that moment because she was taking a shower in the apartment upstairs. The other girls in my flat, were slightly embarrassed that there was a guy standing at their doorstep looking for me, and since they had absolutely no idea where I was (although they were slowly beginning to piece it together), and they knew that the only person who DID know was upstairs, they decided to find her.
So they phoned the other flat.
But the phone was busy.
So they phoned the apartment across from the apartment where my friend was busy taking a shower explained the unpleasant situation to the girls there, and asked them to go to the other flat and find this girl and squeeze the info out of her.
But she was loyal.
She wouldnt tell anyone where I was.
Now by this time, because living in a seminary can be quite boring, a whole bunch of girls had to come over to see what all the drama was about.
So, by now, the entire sem knew. Which was pretty much what I was trying to avoid at all costs. (By now I dont really mind much, as you can tell.)

The guy was still standing at the front door, blushing profusely I can only imagine, and dying to get the hell out of there even if it meant never meeting me, or any other girl from my seminary as far as he was concerned.

But they persisted.
My friend was still in the shower, yelling confidently that she didnt have a clue where I was and wouldnt tell even if she did, and the girls from the apartment across from her were trying to explain to her from the other side of the front door that the guy was HERE and somewhere someone had made a big mistake and she had to tell them where I was NOW.

It took a long while for her to understand the gravity of the situation, and when the penny finally dropped, she dashed out of the shower, got dressed and arrived downstairs dripping wet and apologizing profusely to anyone who cared to listen.
She found the guy (who was by then trying to hide discreetly behind the wall in the parking lot) and explained to him that I was actually waiting for him in the hotel and was, in fact, not here at all.

He looked at her for a long time, then at the watery mess she was making all over his shoes, and without a word got into the car and left.

He came to meet me but that part of the story is not interesting at all so I guess the story ends here.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 30th, 2002 at 4:42 pm and is filed under She. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.