Go Fly a Kite

It’s never a good sign on a first date to run out of gas – especially if your mode of transportation is a boat.

Long before I ever met him, Mark’s first grade teacher, Sister Susan, set him up on a blind date with a woman who lives in Milwaukee. Mark lived in Chicago at the time (on land), and decided it would be fun to take his boat, the Escape Hatch, up to Milwaukee for the blind date, and stay there for the weekend. But it’s a much longer ride than he anticipated, and by the time he got within a quarter mile of shore…he ran out of gas.

He had to call the Coast Guard to help him, which is no small thing. They board your boat, check out every nook and cranny, charge you for the gas and their time, and no doubt give you a lot of shit for being a dumb ass who ran out of gas. All the time this is happening, Mark can see his blind date sitting on the dock, waiting for him.

Needless to say, they didn’t hit it off. Not that they didn’t get along, there just wasn’t a spark.

As a parting gift, he sent her a kite. I scoffed when he told me that detail. “What?” he said. “We talked about kite flying.”