Pizza Peddler

Have you ever had a really bad date experience?  I think we all have though usually it isn't with someone you've been dating for a while.  By a while I mean a few months at 18 a few months seems like a long time versus at 30 something!  First off I should say this is NOT a fictional story it really happened to me and the memory is as fresh now as it was all those years ago.

I had been "dating" this older guy, he was 21, for a couple of months during my first semester of university.  After Thanksgiving, American Thanksgiving because this story takes place in the States, my boyfriend insisted on taking me out for dinner one Saturday night.  I was rather opposed to it because I really didn't like to get all dressed up and go to some fancy place for dinner...however, I finally agreed to go.  You know sometimes there are signs that for some reason we just don't see or pay attention too or both.  My first sign was that he showed up at my room dressed in jeans, JEANS! while I was all nicely dressed, hair done, makeup and jewelry on.

He was pretty excited and had borrowed his roommates car because we were going to drive to Sioux City, Iowa for our big night.  Sioux City, Iowa was known for a long time as the meat packing city, livestock was shipped by train into the city to the stockyards, and well slaughtered and processed into various forms of meat products.  In fact to this day when you enter the city from the west there is still large meat packing plant by the highway and it stinks...badly! This is important and pertinent to the story.

OK back to the roommate's car, we get in and because it's November in South Dakota and freezing he cranks up the heat!  We were immediately blasted by huge puffs of dust or smoke or whatever nasty particles were coming out of the cars heating vents.  But we carried on  to Sioux City passing the meat plant and its huge plumes of toxic smells.  We exited off the highway at some random exit I had never been on and ended up in what I thought was a vacant gravel lot in the bad part of town only to discover it was the old stock yards area and a parking lot to our "restaurant". 

Seriously I was really starting to doubt this "great" date night he had hyped about.  We walked into an old red brick building and took an old freight elevator painted with huge clowns, seriously, up a few floors to the "Pizza Peddler".  Yes my big night out was a cheap pizza dinner at a place that was a converted stock yard restaurant/amusement park place or whatever.  We we going to dine on pizza from huge picnic tables and oh what joy we could drive bumper cars while we waited. I kid you not.  I really didn't think at this point the night could get worse....

We sat down at a table for 12 the only other table was a group of children and adults clearly out for a fun filled night of frivolity!  from out of nowhere comes a robotic coyote riding a tricycle to take our orders...again I am completely serious. It was rather ironic given our school mascot was also a coyote.  However, this one had seen better days and he was operated by a guy I could see behind the kitchen wall plus there was a large speaker in his mouth.  We ordered and they my "boyfriend" left to use the bathroom he was gone for what seemed like forever...again another sign I didn't see.

A few minutes after he returned to our table I saw the coyote coming out of the kitchen with a huge package wrapped in Christmas wrapping paper....I thought it was for the table of kids but no horrified I watched as it passed them and stopped at our table.  Basically it became a battle between me and the coyote who wanted me to open the present right then and there and my boyfriend was no help he actually had the entire place including himself chanting "open the present, open the present" and banging knives and forks on tables.  I can be rather a stubborn person when forced into certain situations and this was one of them.  I absolutely refused to open the present and every time the coyote passed by our table he tried rather pathetically to get me to open it.  I actually at one point told him to come on out and open it himself!  After dinner I was given the choice of either driving bumper cars or going to a movie. I chose the movie because the night had already proven to be much more fun filled than I could have imagined.

When we came out of the movie it was snowing heavily and had been for sometime.  Our 45 minute drive back to campus quickly turned into a 2 hour drive from hell and not just because of the road conditions, and dust blowing heating vents.  No this was when my boyfriend of 2 months decided to pronounce his love for me.  It was a really bad, uncomfortable drive back for some many reasons including that I didn't love him back, didn't know what to say and I was trapped trapped in that little shite box of a car with nowhere to go, no escape for 2 hours.  I have never been so happy to see my dorm in my life.  When I got back to my room, my roommate asked how the night was, I think I just gave her a look.  She said I told him you probably wouldn't like it.  Oh and I thanked her for letting me go out all dressed and make-uped up.  It turns out I could have worn jeans and a t-shirt and been just fine.  In fact I would have had more in common with the chanting children and coyote!  I also opened the present it was a lava lamp.  Oh the romance of it all.

A few months afterward a friend of mine set me up with this guy and as we drove to Sioux City he asked "Have you ever been to Pizza Peddler?"  I kid you not.  I replied "Yes, yes I have". We went and played mini-golf as apparently there was no end to the fun filled games packed into the old red brick stock yard buildings.  We really had a good time but we didn't have pizza.  Ahh the irony.  I actually told him my story and we both laughed really hard.

Looking back the whole experience makes me laugh I mean I could have been a little bit more excited about the Pizza Peddler! I guess the boyfriend really did go out on a limb and try to be exciting and I guess I didn't appreciate it at the time...though I don't know how someone who is horrified by those public displays could be.  Plus I mean really it kind of proved that he didn't know me at all or at least those where my feelings.  Our relationship only lasted a month longer I can't say that the forray into Pizza Peddler land was the reason but seriously it didn't help. 

Food For Thought

“A man on a date wonders if he'll get lucky.  The women already knows".  ~ Monica Piper