I remember one particularly memorable disaster. I’d managed to get a date with a girl who most guys considered to be the most attractive girl in the school. I was excited. This time I’d make up for my previous romantic screw-ups. I arrived early at the girl’s house to take her to a Sunday afternoon New York Giants football game at Yankee Stadium. Tickets for these games are sold out years in advance. (In retrospect, it finally occurred to me that it was the tickets, rather than my appeal, that proved irresistible in getting me this date.) Through a friend of my father’s I was able to get two good seats for the game. I just needed to meet my dad’s friend in front of the ticket booth fifteen minutes prior to game time.

Everything would have been fine, but I was so distracted thinking of Suzanne’s good looks that I took the wrong bus and we were soon lost in an area where I’d never been before. Suzanne was, to say the least, unamused by my bumbling. By the time we reached the stadium, exactly at game time, any normal person could have seen that whatever slight chance I might have had with her was long gone. While my optimism (or my libido) didn’t allow me to recognize this, what even I couldn’t deny was that something else that was long gone was my dad’s friend. I searched here, and I searched there, but the S.O.B. clearly hadn’t wanted to risk missing the opening kickoff for my sake. Without any regard for my entire romantic future, he had gone into the stadium.

Suzanne suggested that we just forget about it and go home. No way, I thought. I can’t give up now. She’s really warming up to me. I’ll show her how talented I am. I’ll just talk my way into Yankee Stadium. Yeah, no problem. I’ll just explain to the guard that I was supposed to meet my dad’s friend Vinnie, but I took the wrong bus and Vinnie went in without me. And, you know, these things happen. So, you know, I have this date and I don’t want it ruined and we’re all part of this great brotherhood of man, so why not just let me in?

The guard, however, would have none of this. The brotherhood of man meant nothing to him; my date meant nothing to him. All of morality to him boiled down to one simple aphorism: “No tickee. No laundry.” I was outraged. I was desperate. I started to beg. I did have a ticket. I wasn’t a crook. I had a ticket and I was entitled to be inside. My ticket was inside. Vinnie had my ticket. If the guard would just let us in, I’d get my ticket and show it to him. He was unmoved. Then I had an idea. He could just let me in and I’d leave Suzanne as security. He could just lock her up in the detention cage and I’d go get the tickets from Vinnie and return. This idea appealed to him. He locked her in the cage and let me in.

Have you ever tried to find one person in a stadium that holds sixty thousand people? It’s not easy. It takes more than five minutes. It takes hours. By miracle, just before halftime I found him. Boy, would Suzanne be impressed! She had just spent over an hour, though, on a stool in a cage, listening to catcalls and other endearments from male football fans while waiting for me to return. She let me know I was no hero. She didn’t let me know a whole lot more because for the rest of the afternoon she didn’t speak to me.

At the conclusion of the date I suggested we go out next week. She was busy. Two weeks then? Busy too. Three weeks? Exams. Next month? Family trip. After that? Real boyfriend in from college.

Unbelievable! It seemed this girl had booked every available hour for the next year, at least as far as being available to me.