Under 1000

On a crisp night in Manhattan's East Village neighborhood, I met Nathan. I was 24, and my only prerequisite for agreeing to a date with someone at that time was that they were somewhere north of 5'9." So, I was happy when we met at a quiet, somewhat dark wine bar and he was easily 6 feet tall. I had just used two sets of Crest Whitestrips back to back (not recommended), and despite my stinging gums, I was feeling good, looking good and only mildly sweating from the walk over.

As we began to talk, Nathan and I realized we had a few things in common. We both worked in fashion, with both loved the color orange, and we both didn't know enough about wine to make the other feel bad about missing the hints of cinnamon, or cherry, or dish soap from the mid-price red we were drinking. However, the similarities stopped when we started talking about hobbies outside of work. I had been volunteer tutoring some students on the SAT (I know, I'm a saint) for the past 3 months and was talking about how frustrating, I mean rewarding, it was to work with teenagers once a week after school. 

"Oh wow, that's great. Did you have to get a certain score to qualify for that?" he questioned.

"Um, I don't think so? But you probably should have broken 1000 on the SATs if you're trying to help kids are already scoring 8-900 on their own," I responded, after we had already discussed he went to college, at a school with a median score well over 1000.

"Well I guess that disqualifies me," he quickly snapped back, but did it with the kind of grin that says: hey I'm clearly kidding let's see if you take the bait.

So, I naturally responded by laughing hysterically, the kind of laugh with knee-slapping and the whole bit. After 20 seconds of 'playing along' I realized Nathan was putting on his coat to leave. 

"You're a dick," he said as he draped his scarf around his neck.

"W-wait," I stuttered, as I realized what was happening. "But you couldn't possibly have scored under 1000, you went to ___ University."

He turned a shade of bright red, stormed out of the bar, and left me with a half drank $32 bottle of Malbec, which I swished and swirled as I pleased with him via text, apologizing vehemently. He never responded and I almost drowned myself in a pool of pretentiousness 

[Three months later]

LinkedIn always finds a way of reminding me of failed dates (I will dedicate another post to how creepy Linkedin is), and sure enough, Nathan came up as a suggested connection. I resisted, but naturally took a look through his profile, given my self appointed credentials as world class super sleuth, or as my friends simply call me, Harriet the Spy.

Not only did he not have the University he told me he attended listed, it appears that he didn't attend college at all. Or, he's just one of those guys still stuck in his glory days on the football team, since he only had a high school diploma listed in an otherwise very thorough profile. So to Nathan I say, "sorry I'm an ass for presuming someone scored over 1000, but if you had offered me your high school varsity letterman jacket, we could have been married by now."