About/Directions
First step, swallow that bile that just rose in your throat when you read the word "essay." This isn't that kind of essay. All you need to do is tell us about the worst date you've ever had. We're not just talking about fat blind date bad. We're talking fat blind date throwing up on you at the funnel cake stand in Rye Playland bad...or, you know, whatever.
If we think your date was the most awful thing ever, we'll give you 500 bucks on behalf of the movie My Best Friend's Girl.
Ready? Start writing!
Sample Essay
The worst date I have ever been on involved a New York heat wave, a veritable stranger, and a play about gay penguins. On their own, each of these features might not destroy a date, but combined, well...I'll start from the beginning:
It was hot as all hell. Like, strangers-sweating-on-you hot. This, of course, wasn't the date's fault, but in hindsight it may have been.
The date I was meeting was someone I had met at summer camp the summer after 7th grade and had not seen in the 5 years since. This situation is even worse than a regular blind date because you can't act like total strangers (even though you pretty much are) and ask new and interesting questions. Instead, the conversation has to obsessively circle the one thing you have in common: your 4 weeks at Hidden Valley Summer Camp in 2001. "What was the name of that bunk that smelled like asparagus pee?" "Do you remember that one counselor named, like, Wingo or Bango?"
These are not the questions of a star-crossed love affair.
Also, being greeted with a "friendly" headlock has never made someone swoon.
Unfortunately, the rules of dating demand that you can't just say, "This was stupid. Let's call it quits and maybe each of us can salvage the rest of our day." Instead, you have to suck it up and go sit in a hot, off off off Broadway theater and watch a 3-hour play about gay penguins.
I could try to explain how the gay penguin play came about, but honestly, I don't know. I still don't know who wrote that play or why, but I do know that I never saw that date again. And I've never been able to look at penguins the same way either.
