One time, I was on a date with a girl, and she told me that she was into conspiracy theories. Because she phrased it like that, I thought that she was into learning about conspiracy theories and having a laugh about them.

Me: “Oh, interesting. Care to elaborate?”

She then went off for like an hour about 5G. (This was awkward as h*** because I’m an engineer who designs 5G small-cell telecom towers.) I listened for a little while, and then I started prodding with obvious questions.

Me: “What do you think is sinister about them?”

Me: “Why would telecom companies choose to poison everyone over airborne radio waves?” 

Me: “What would anybody have to gain from that?”

I finally told her that I design structures that allow telecom companies to put up 5G equipment in the world.

Then, she was all excited. And I guess she thought she was gonna crack the code. She started asking me a million weird questions.

Girl: “Why don’t they want us to know they’re putting up 5G?”

Me: “Everyone knows, and these towers have to be approved by local government. Just show up to city hall.”

Girl: “Why does 5G give people headaches?”

Me: “Why do headaches happen to people all the time?”

The one that stuck out to me the most was:

Girl: “What’s the black goo for?”

Me: “I’ve designed all sorts of equipment and cables, and never in my life have my project requirements said, ‘Don’t forget to leave space for black goo tubes.’”

Girl: “No, I’ve seen videos of people digging around 5G sites, and there are these big tubes full of black goo! And they say that it has a horrible smell from whatever is in it. But they hide them because these people had to dig really deep, past all the electrical conduits and fibers and ordinary stuff!”

And now I was laughing my a** off and she was confused.

Me: “You watched a guy dig up and break into a sewer line. I’ll bet it did smell bad!”

Anyway, I walked her back to her car and said goodnight. The next day, she was messaging me mad that I didn’t invite her back to my place or schedule another date.

It is Valentine’s Day. A couple have sat down and the guy immediately takes over ordering for both of them. I see this usually with couples who have been together for a long time, but this feels like a young relationship, possibly a first date, and the woman seems irked by it.

Guy: “Yeah, we’ll have the bone-in tenderloin, and add on some lobster tails for us both.”

He throws in a nice bottle of wine, and they eat everything. At the end of the night, with a few minutes to closing, I bring by their check and the guy turns to me with a smug look on his face.

Guy: “So, I’m not paying a cent. I’m a hunter and there’s no such thing as a bone-in tenderloin. You thought you could swindle me.”

He’s doing this as some kind of act of bravado to impress his date. Instead, she looks mortified, and as sorry as I feel for her all I can do is laugh.

Guy: “What’s so funny?”

Me: “Please give me a moment to inform the kitchen of your… complaint. It’s been a very demanding night, and they could do with the laugh.”

He tries to stop me, but I have opened the door to the kitchen and loudly inform them what the customer told me. The sound of them all laughing so hard amplifies into the restaurant. I return to the table.

Me: “Thanks, sir. We needed that. Now how will you be paying?”

Embarrassed, but still not willing to back down, he still claims we’re trying to sell a fake piece of meat. Our manager comes over with the packaging of some uneaten fresh bone-in tenderloin, clearly labeled.

Manager: “Hey! Kraven! What do you make of this?! I can Google it too if you like?”

He paid.

I’m on a date with a woman I met through a dating app. We’re chatting about our favorite exercise activities. She likes to use the rowing machine at the gym. I like to run.

Woman: “Oh! Oh! What’s the longest 5k you’ve ever run?”

Me: “Uh… 5,000 meters?”

Woman: “Haven’t you run more than that?”

Me: “I’ve done a few half-marathons. Never a full one, though.”

Woman: “So, the longest 5k you’ve run is a half-marathon?”

Me: “I think you’re misunderstanding something, but I don’t know how to explain it to you without potentially making you feel foolish. Are you okay with me explaining more carefully how races work? It might make you feel dumb, and I don’t want to hurt your feelings or leave a bad impression.”

Fortunately, we were able to resolve the misunderstanding without anyone feeling bad about it. She had thought that “5k” just meant a race because she’d heard people talking about a 5k race that was coming up at the gym, and they were using the two terms interchangeably.

We have more dates coming up in the future!

Back in the 1990s, my parents were students at the same college and had been dating for a few years. One day, my dad drove up from his parents’ house to visit my mom in her dorm, and it started snowing. Neither of them paid much attention to it, but after an hour or two, they realized that it was piling up fast. REALLY fast.

My dad didn’t think his beater car could make it through the storm, so he picked up the dorm’s landline phone and called his dad to tell him what was going on.

Dad: “So, I think I’ll stay in [Mom]’s dorm until the plows come through in the morning. Her roommate said she’s fine with it.”

Grandpa: “Don’t be silly! I’ll come and pick you up.”

Dad: “Dad, no. It’s a blizzard out there—”

Grandpa: “No, no, I’m coming to get ya! Just hang tight!”

My grandpa then hung up and drove thirty minutes in a Michigan blizzard just to pick up my dad, ignoring the severe weather alerts on his radio the entire way, assumedly because he’d convinced himself that they’d have sex if he let my dad stay for the night — in a single room that my very upright mother shared with a roommate who woke at the slightest sound.

My dad and grandpa did get back home in one piece, and my grandpa was quite relieved when he didn’t get his first grandchild until I was born — two years after they got married!

My in-laws are stereotypical boomers. They are nice people for the most part, but they lack a basic understanding of how the real world works in the year 2024. For example, they were rather upset that I didn’t take their last name, and they do not understand why I don’t want to push out a litter of kids — and why they cannot see the non-existent litter of kids in the hospital due to their vaccine beliefs and smoking.

They aren’t completely narrow-minded, though, as they have stopped expecting their thirty-five-year-old asexual daughter to settle down and have kids. Though… that might be because my father-in-law has one foot in the grave, so she is expected to move back in (from her youngest brother’s house) to be a free caretaker.

At any rate, upon learning that their eldest son and I are “one and done”, my mother-in-law goes a bit haywire and tries to hook her youngest son (twenty-eight) up with one of her friends’ daughters (twenty-one). Long story short, it doesn’t go well as her youngest is a self-certified “Nice Guy” and “High-Value Male”. They end up having a single coffee date before she becomes one with the wind.

Here is where it gets delicious, though!

My mom and sister are planning our baby shower about a month and a half after that coffee date, and they ask [Mother-In-Law] for an invite list. Somehow, all her friends are more conservative than my in-laws, so they RSVP without their husbands and decide to bring their daughters instead.

Neither I nor my husband have a relationship with these girls. This is mainly because he is a good ten-plus years older than most of them, so any time he has seen them, they were kids and he was a teenager or young adult, and I am not part of the party scene, so I never went out drinking with my mother-in-law, sister-in-law, and co.

My mom sends me a text.

Mom: “Hey, what was the name of the girl that ghosted [Brother-In-Law]?”

Me: “I think he said her name was Mandy? Why?”

Mom: “[Mother-In-Law]’s friend [Woman] is bringing her daughter. But her name is Samantha.”

Me: “Okay, so different daughter?”

Mom: “I guess so…”

Dear reader, it was NOT a different daughter. My idiot, self-absorbed brother-in-law had gotten her name wrong this entire time! A whole freaking month of lamenting how sad and upset he was that “Mandy” — a girl he had met twice! — had ditched him down the drain. Cue an entire baby shower of her pointedly avoiding him every time he tried to talk to her.

Bless the boomers for this boon.