The Dating Diaries - Entry 1 - Chilean Wife's Day

While Charlotte and I were waiting for our Princes Phillip and Eric to come along we dated many frogs. Ok, we also dated many wonderful Princes intended for others. Many times we commented about how we should write a book when "all this was over." Well, this is not a book but I thought it might be fun to do an occasional blog entry about those fabulous (and not-so-fabulous) dating days.

As much as possible, this is straight from my journal.

November 14, 2002

A week ago I was sitting on my couch when the phone rang. It was a guy from Chile named V. He doesn't speak much English and I speak even less Spanish. He asked me out for Friday night. I accepted (part of the reason Char and I have so many good stories is that we had a really hard time saying no to a first date - unless we felt unsafe). He called me on Thursday night and apparently he had purchased an electronic translator since his previous call. So, one word at a time we determined that we would go to dinner on Friday and that he would invite C and M (because they speak Spanish) to translate for us. Well, Friday morning the phone rang. It was C. She wanted T's phone number because M couldn't go. Things continued to develop throughout the day and low and behold, TW and CM (not the original C) ended up going with us. We tried to go to a Mexican restaurant, but there was a 45 minute wait. So, we headed to the Cabin Fever restaurant. The whole evening was very funny as we relied on T and C to translate absolutely everything!

I learned that every Friday in Chile is "Wife's Day." At that point, T (who was translating) said (in English) that he thought I should accept the marriage proposal and enjoy Chile. I told him to keep his eye on the ball (meaning it was his job to help me convince V that this wouldn't work), then he said that he was thinking about switching teams. V wanted to know what we were saying. T said it was C's turn to translate. She looked like a deer in headlights but then decided she could translate "thinking about switching teams" directly and did. Of course, V didn't understand what that meant and wanted clarification. C then turned to T and said, "your turn!" T ended up concocting some story about needing to change the kind of girls he dates so that he can get married.

Next V wanted to know how many children I wanted to have. I told him that I thought I would probably have three. He was very disgusted and indicated he wanted us to have 5 or 7. I told C that she would have to explain "biological clocks" to him (she declined).

As if the evening wasn't funny enough, V backed his borrowed car into a van as we left the restaurant. Then he just took off. We were dying.

Saturday night T and I were both at C's house with some other friends. She indicated that V had called her to see if I was interested. I told C that I thought I needed to just tell V that he deserved to marry a young Chilean woman who could have many children. She agreed to translate for me. We didn't get the chance to talk to him at church. He called her later that evening and she just told him. Whew, an international disaster was averted! What a funny situation!