There is a gold mine of stories of Valentine’s Day dating disasters that are posted online. I dug through them and excavated a few choice nuggets. I can’t vouch for the for the truth of the tales, just the humor.
The first story involved a romantic getaway to a cabin in the Poconos. “After we settled into bed, I awoke to a bat swooping down on me and my boyfriend. I started screaming, he ran out of the room (big help). My terrified dog and I finally crawled out of the room underneath a blanket. We spent the rest of the night trying to get the bat out of the house.”
The next tale featured a cooking mishap. “We went to a teppanyaki restaurant where the chef was tossing knives and missed — one flew into a stack of soup bowls next to me, grazed my neck, and splashed soup all over my clothes. Later, I got food poisoning [adding insult to injury].”
Several stories involved botched wedding proposals. There was an attempted proposal near a fountain which was hijacked when a duck stole the ring. They chased the duck for two hours before they were able to retrieve the ring. And a proposal by an elderly gentleman who fell when he tried to kneel and had to be hauled away in an ambulance. The restaurant manager had to drive the teeth of the prospective bride to the hospital because she’d taken them out to eat and left them on the table in the confusion.
Finally, a touching story to conclude. An elderly woman dined in a nice restaurant with her teen-aged grandson on Valentine’s Day. He placed a framed photo of his recently deceased grandfather on the table. The day would have been their 70th wedding anniversary. His grandfather had always wanted to take his grandmother the restaurant but never had the money, so the grandson saved and solicited donations from relatives and took her there. As they ate dinner, they remembered the good times with the man. The grandmother passed away a few days later holding the photo of her beloved husband. The grandson said he was happy he could make that night special for her. It was the only time she’d smiled since his grandfather had passed away. He carries the photo taken at the restaurant in his wallet.
