shantell ogden

Chantel here.

We’ve decided that normally we will not tell stories on here that didn’t happen to us or could identify a single person (see guidelines below). However, this is not a normal story.
 
Many of you commented to me that you want to know about those bad dates I mentioned in my previous post. I will give the people what they want! I’ll give you the crème-de-la crème! The stuff of Sloan legend! Ladies and gentlemen, I give you…
 
Eye-patch guy.
 
This happened 40 years ago to my mother, so I think we can have a statute of limitations on the “don’t identify specific people” rule.
 
Once upon a time, my mother was a college student.  Like most of us, she lived in dorms, went to cheesy weird college parties and stressed about finals.  She also dated like crazy. We’re talking 4 dates a week with different people kind of dating. That, apparently, was the 70’s.
 
One time she was asked out by a guy that she thought was kind of strange.  This particular guy also happened to be a roommate of two of her brothers, who were attending the same school.  She didn’t really want to go out with him, but what harm could it cause to have dinner and get to know him, right?  He seemed safe enough. One thing she knew about him, was that he seemed to have recently had some eye surgery or something, because he wore a pirate-style eye patch over one eye. Not to be one to hurt someone’s feeling by pointing out an obvious physical malady, she let it go.

By the way, it turns out that this guy also had classic long 70’s hair, helping to complete the pirate-esqueness of the whole look.
 
He picked her up in his car and drove her back to his apartment to have dinner. Notice I said he drove. You aren’t supposed to drive with an eye patch on. You have no depth perception. They swerved and veered all over the road with narrow miss following narrow miss. He didn’t seem to notice the danger at all, while she tried to hyperventilate quietly in the passenger seat. Finally, arriving safe at dinner, she thought the worst (besides the impending drive home) was over.
 
At dinner, the conversation was ok enough. They sat and ate and had a fairly normal time for a while. To his credit, he had tried to be romantic by making it a candlelight setting. What was this fancy romantic meal, you ask? Hamburger helper. Yep.
 
So there they were in her brother's apartment. Hamburger helper, candlelight, long hair, eye patch, depth perception… you see where this is all going, right?
 
Leaning over to shift something around, his hair lit up in a blaze of buccaneer glory.  Quick to the helm, my mom immediately started trying to blow it out. She eventually succeeded, but her companion's hair didn't survive so well. He had singed hair all up the front, and they were left with the delightful odor of burnt hair to enjoy the rest of the evening.
 
Just moments before, her brothers had arrived home and were there to witness the whole thing. They were in the other room but had seen more than enough and fell on the ground laughing, in her words, like hyenas. Clearly, at this point the evening was done. They finished, left, and mom steeled herself for the drive home. Swerving and veering, they narrowly escaped serious injury or death for the third time that night, but arrived safely home. She thanked him and went inside, of course vowing that this was the last time she would ever see him.
 
And now he’s my Dad.  OK, just kidding, he’s not (thankfully).  There’s one more thing that made extra sure that didn’t happen, though. She found out later that his eyesight was perfectly fine. He didn’t need the patch at all. He just thought it looked cool.