First Date
One day Patrick called me to ask me out on a group date to the New York Botanical Gardens in the Bronx. I was pretty flattered that he would ask me; I figured he asked because his friends were coming to NYC, and he knew I lived there too. Since talking to Patrick was usually pretty nice, I said yes. I arrived at the Botanical Gardens early, sat in my car and waited for Patrick and his friends to arrive. Patrick called me as they got closer, and I grew pretty anxious. I hadn’t seen him in person since we first met. I actually didn’t really remember what he looked like.
A couple of minutes passed and they arrived. I walked towards Patrick, excited to see him. We walked around the garden, taking pictures of each other and the flowers. One picture we took was in the rose garden. Patrick is a very silly person so his pose in the garden was of him raising both of his hands all the way up, pointing towards the rose bushes above him. I was not posing like that, as generally I am pretty reserved. We start to move along, losing the rest of the group that came along with us. Again Patrick and I got lost in conversation, and lost in the garden. We got lost for a good half hour, actually. We asked around to find our way but still kept talking so much it took longer than it should have. Needless to say we had a great time.
We got back to my car, and Patrick sat in the passenger side and immediately reclined the seat all the way back. I will never forget it. My thought was, What does he think he’s doing? He is way too comfortable. I didn’t say anything to him but I was thinking this was probably our last date. The next stop on the date was a pizza place, and then somehow we ended up in McDonald’s playing Bananagrams. While I was waiting outside McDonald’s with Patrick, my friends from the Campus Ministry drove past me on their way to a teen devotional (we were headed there later as well). They started to embarrass me by making faces in front of Patrick and I, because they realized that I was actually on a date. When they drove away all I could do was shake my head. It felt like I had just had my big brother pull up and catch me on a date with someone. That’s how Patrick met my friends. Neat, huh?
Afterwards we headed out to the teen devotional where my friends were as well. We were having a college day. Basically, we were invited to share about the colleges we were each attending in order to educate and encourage the teens to make the right choices educationally. The date ended there, because I was there to share about my college. We said our goodbyes, but Patrick and his friends stayed for a little while longer to scope things out. They eventually left, and I didn’t know if or when I was going to see him again.