The Disappointing Sequel | Expectations vs Reality

Wow..

First of all I want to say a massive thank you to everybody who took the time to read my last blog (You can click Here if you haven't read it yet), I was literally so surprised how many of you took the time to read it and was really pleased with the feedback and reception it received. I suppose being taken to court has it's advantages. Level up: Popularity +1.

Now I need to be honest. That last blog was a complete and utter fluke as far as I'm concerned. I had something pretty huge happen to me and it made for a cracking story of love, loss, crazy bitches and court. Outside of that? I'm boring. (Unless you're a single female.. I'm really exciting, interesting and completely not desperate.. Inbox me).

Take a normal day in my life for example, I wake up, I order pizza, I spam right on tinder hoping to get at least some form of interaction with a human from the opposite sex, I fail, I ring my mum, I go to bed.

You know, It's not an overly exciting lifestyle to write about for a Blog. However, a few of you have asked me to write some more and continue churning out stories of my misfortune with the ladies, work and life. Thanks for that. 

I have a few more stories up my sleeve, so I'm probably going to try to do a blog every 2-4 weeks. Hopefully that way It will make my blog last a little longer instead of exhausting all my resources straight away and hopefully in that time more interesting and miserable things will happen to me. We can only hope. 

Right, enough of that. You're here for a story of me making myself look like an idiot.

How about my disappointing first date? Does that sound like something you want to laugh at? Good. 

Like most of my stories, I'm going to have to take you back in time, this one goes back to 2011 when I was in year 12 studying for my A-levels. For those of you who don't know, I went to a different school for A-levels, the reasoning behind this move was because the school offered what I believed to be a better prospect for my future. AKA. It had girls I hadn't met yet.

This is where I want to bring in this week's theme for my blog. Expectations vs Reality. If anyone has ever seen the film 500 days of summer you might be familiar with this. you can find the scene I'm talking about below. It's depressing.

So.. This blog and the story of my first date will use the Expectations vs Reality format.

For Example..

Expectation

I would start my new school, make loads of new friends, connect with a girl that I really liked, get a girlfriend.

Reality

I left school a Virgin. 

Or..

If you look really closely you can tell that the one on the right has been Photoshopped. I just bulked for the other. (Thanks to Rob Gray for photoshopping my face on two different men's half naked bodies)

You get the picture.

Anyway, so I made friends at my new school (shocker) and there was this one girl who I really liked. Once again, I won't be using real names, not only because I think it's horrible to name and shame people but also because every time I say her name my heart begins to break in half. Shit.

So anyway, Sarah wasn't only pretty, but she had a great personality, sense of humour and taste in music too. I was pretty much smitten. She was giving off signs that she might like me too, such as-

1. Looking in my general direction.

2. Talking to me.

So, I mean, you can forgive me for thinking that she was into me. The signs were all there.

Anyway, drunk Ross told her how he felt and got shot down, which was a bit confusing, apparently I was a good friend but wasn't seen in a romantic way. I believe the scientific term for what happened was "Friendzoned". Which completely caught me off guard, I thought her talking about other guys and also saying "You're like a brother to me" were all shoo-ins.

Some time after Sarah got a boyfriend and although I never really talked to him he was a pretty popular guy, the couple times I did talk to him he was actually a really nice guy. Which actually, funnily enough, makes me the Villain of this love story. 

They had probably only been going out a month when they broke up. I immediately pounced on the opportunity to be a rebound and start operation get out of the friend zone. #Frexit. I mean, It was my turn bro. She was upset and I was there to comfort here. Cue First Expectation vs Reality.

Expectation

I ask her on a romantic date, she says yes. She immediately starts to think of me as more than just a friend and see's that there is potential to develop something more between us.

Reality

I ask her if she want's to do something. She says yes. She wants to be distracted from her ex. 

So.. To take away from that first point. I'm now thinking that when we do something, we are going on a date, romantically. That's pretty clear right? When you say to a girl "Hey, let's hang out" there is no way that she can misinterpret that to anything other than "One day I'm going to marry you and we are going to start a milkshake business, franchise it, become millionaires, move to LA, sell our success story as an Oscar winning film starring Matthew Lewis as me and live happily ever after ". Text book stuff.

Anyway, the day of the date comes around and at this point in my life I am still washing dishes for £5 an hour at The Pavilion in Broadstairs (Shout out to everyone who I worked with there). I finish work, go home, get showered, put a shirt on (I'm making an effort) and then get in my Dads Toyota Yaris and drive to go pick her up.

Now, She happened to be at a family gathering during the day and she asked if I could go pick her up from there instead of her house, I have no problem with this, she's cool, her family will be cool. She tells me her Uncle is a policeman and that's fine with me, I've not done anything illegal.

Expectation

I arrive outside her family gathering, go to the door, knock, she opens, I give her a kiss on the cheek and a hug (of course I bloody do). She invites me in where I meet the family. I make a witty joke, they fall in love with me. I go up to Paul, the uncle Policeman, have some banter with him, he pretends to put me in handcuffs for being too much of a bloody good laugh. I say goodbye to everyone, Paul invites me round for Christmas later on in the year. We drive off on our date.

Reality

I arrive outside her family gathering. I begin to panic as my 18 year old self begins to feel the pressure of impressing people he has never met before. I start to worry that the Policeman uncle might somehow know that I have an illegal copy of Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber of Fleet Street at home on DVD. I ring Sarah and tell her I'm outside and ask her to come and meet me out the front. She gets in the car. We drive off on our date.

Pussy.

2011 was a funny year, I'm not sure whether it was our age group or something that had really just taken off, but, if you were to take a girl on a date, there was only really one acceptable place you could take her. A place that would make sure that she knew that you cared about her. A place that would make her question whether there really was something more than just friendship.

Nandos. Obviously.

So we rock up, I do a sweet reverse park into a space right outdoors and we walk inside.

Expectation

We enter, the waitress asks "Have you been to Nandos before?" I reply "Yes" I impress Sarah with my mad knowledge of the Nandos menu. We sit down at a table and I go straight up to the cutlery bar and grasp knifes, forks, napkins and sauce.. No messing about from this Nandos expert. She's now realising that this clearly isn't my first Nandos date and that she should snap me up before I have the next one in my sights.

Reality

As we walk up to Nandos I spot there is a bit of queue, At the back of the queue are family friends. This date is not going to plan. We stand behind them and I hope to god that they don't turn around so that I don't have to make the awkward chat and introduce Sarah to everyone. Obviously they turn around and spot me. We awkwardly chat and Sarah is introduced. Finally the queue dies down and of course we are seated on the table right fucking next to them. I'ts fine though, I can make this work, even with the new added pressure. I go up to the cutlery bar and grab the knife's, forks, napkins and sauce. As I'm walking back, I realise that perhaps grabbing all this stuff was a little too ambitious for my-

I drop the sauce. It smashes. The customers of Nandos let out a collective "Wheeeeeeeeeeey". A group of lads sat across the restaurant yells "Spillage is Lickage" and I turn bright red and sit down.

You can imagine that by this point I'm not too hopeful. This date has really not gone the way that I would have liked it too. I've not done anything to impress her and really just made myself look like a scared little sheep who's got his head stuck in a barbed wired fence.

Anyway, we look at the Nandos menu. I think I wanted a double chicken breast, medium, in a pita with peri peri chips. An average Nandos for an average date. I can't remember what she had, I'm going to guess a double chicken breast in a wrap, medium. Classic Sarah.

Expectation

I pay for the Nandos. She is so touched and feels like a princess. She starts to see me as a guy that will treat her to things because I think the world of her. She begins to realise that I'm the sort of guy that would buy her Diamond rings and take her to Paris for our 1 month celebration of awkwardly dating at school. My money and my willingness to pay for things makes me suddenly much more attractive. She wants to be with me.

Reality

I paid for the Nandos.

So afterwards, we leave. I've had a fairly fun time even though my expectations haven't aligned with the reality of the evening. But then again, I expected her to want a pudding and she didn't so I saved about an extra £4.50 there. So.. Swings and Roundabouts.

Dinners over. So what next?

Expectation

I ask her if she wants to come back to mine. She says Yes. We go back to mine where I have carefully planned the evening of the date to when my parents and sister are all out of the house doing other stuff. She comes back to mine. We watch a film, something good but not that interesting or plot driven so that her attention isn't divulged away from me too much. So we are watching Shrek 3 when I start to pull out the moves. Ross, you old dog. I put my arm around her, she gives me that look and then my prayers are answered.

Reality

She wants to go to some guys party I've never talked to before which happens to be tonight. Fuck. We go to this party, full of people I've never met or talked to at school. They are, lets face it, a different class of 18 year olds compared to me, you know, social, good looking, all sleeping with each other. I'm sat there whilst all these girls come up to Sarah and ask about what happened between her and David (again, not his real name) and she begins telling them about how they broke up, but also how last week she lost her Virginity to him. I'm sat there playing, fucking.. Doodle Jump on my phone trying not to cry. 

By this point I'm done with the night, I make up some bullshit reason of why I have to go and just leave. It wasn't successful. I drive home and Beyonce's "Best Thing I Never Had" comes on the radio. I get in, go to my room. I open up my laptop. I go to my history. I open the page and  I start to furiously ma-

tch.com.

I get a text from Sarah saying something along the lines of "Thanks for taking me out tonight. I had a really good time. You're such a good friend helping me keep my mind off of David. Love you xx"

Now, what you read is what the text actually says. What I read was

"Love you xx"

So I go to sleep, I'm a naive fool but I begin to think that the date was successful. Sure she said "Friend" but why wouldn't she want to date someone who's her friend?

Now here comes the last Expectation vs Reality. It's a shitter. But it's 100% true and was bloody heartbreaking for 18 year old Ross.

Expectation

I wake up the next morning. I look on my phone and she's text me. "Hey, So I've been thinking, that was a lot of fun last night, we should definitely do something again soon! I have a free house tonight, want to come round?". We live happily ever after.

Reality

I wake up the next morning. I look on my phone and there's no texts. I log in to facebook. I watch a video of a screaming goat. I scroll down. "Sarah is in a relationship with David". 

Yeah. She legit got back with her Ex the day after I took her on a date. Which leads me to believe that I may have misinterpreted some signs along the way and that perhaps, just perhaps, the date wasn't that good. In fact, it was so horrific that she probably thought "Fuck. I'm running out of choices here, I don't want to date boring guys like this for the rest of my life. I better go and get my Ex back."

So yeah, thats the story of my first "date" and a life lesson that you should never ever believe that your expectations will match the reality.

I talked to her the other day actually and asked her if it was okay that I wrote about this, can never be too careful, people will take you to court over anything.

She was like "Yeah sure, use what you like. It'll be interesting to read because I don't think I actually remember it"

I'm glad I have that lasting effect on people.

Thanks for reading again,

I hope it wasn't too much of a disappointment. If you did like it however, would be really nice if you gave the link a Like, Share or a Re-tweet. Helps me know that I'm doing something right.