Articles Written By Dale Lee

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Blind Date With The Donut Lady©


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As I left her home, I was committed to never again going to be a part of a blind date. I had heard that blind dates are sometimes successful. I would not be able to find out if a blind date can be successful, because it would require me to have a second blind date.

Jane, a colleague, told me that she had a friend, Sue, that she thought would be someone I would like and enjoy. She said that her friend had won a Doris Day Look-A-Like contest. I told Jane that I was not interested in going on a blind date. Over a couple of weeks, June asked me several times if I would call Sue. To shut Jane up, I decided to call Sue. A Doris Day Look-A-Like contest winner was something I had thought about several times. From having seen Doris Day’s movies, I though Doris Day was very nice looking and had a nice figure.

Even thought I did not feel comfortable with the idea, a time was arranged for me to call Sue. I made the phone call. I found out that she was a manager of a donut shop. She confirmed that she had won a Doris Day Look-A-Like contest. She was a good conversationalist, and she had never been married. Out of being polite, I did not ask anything about her age, weight, when she won the Doris Day Look-A-Like contest, how often she dated each week, and if she had ever been in a relationship in which there was serious talk about getting married. I did not want to ask Sue for a date if she had trouble getting dates. I found that being polite and nice can get you in trouble.

I decided to go against my gut feeling and asked Sue for a date. Sue accepted the date. We decided to go to breakfast the next Saturday. I figured that if the date was not a good one, I would have her home by ten o’clock in the morning. To cover myself in case the date ended up being a disaster, I told Sue that I had a noon meeting. I did not tell her that going to the grocery store was my meeting. June, the match maker was happy that we were going on a date. She was sure Sue and I would have a good time.

I was to be at Sue’s house at 7:30 a.m. She lived about fifteen minutes from me. We would go to a restaurant for breakfast.

As I drove to her house, I was experiencing a variety of feelings and thoughts. What if she was ugly, we did not hit it off, she did not look like Doris Day that I had seen in movies, she did not like me, etc. This was my first blind date, and I did not want it to be a bad date. As I parked my car in Sue’s driveway, my mind debated if I was to get out of the car or back out of the driveway and go home. I took a deep breath and got out of the car.

As I walked to the front door, I noticed that the outside of the house and yard were well kept. I pushed the doorbell and waited. I would soon know what Sue looked like. I saw the door start to move. My heart started beating a little faster.

It seemed to happen in one motion. The door opened, and the head of a very big dog was facing me nose to nose. My instincts caused me to step back on the porch as I tried to grasp what had just happened. I was trying to decide if I needed to run. It was a very big black and white dog. It finally dawned on me that the head of the dog was sticking through the middle section of the storm door and the door was shut. I finally got control of myself and look away from the dog’s head to find Sue. There was Sue standing beside the dog. She was a large woman. I was not opposed to a few extra pounds, but seeing a very big dog’s nose and a very big woman in the time span of a couple of seconds was a big shock to me.

While I was trying to gain control of my thoughts, Sue asked me to come in. I guess the look on my face tipped her off that she needed to move the dog. Being uneasy about going on the date and the unexpected surprise of seeing the head of such a large dog did overwhelm me. After she moved the dog away from the door, I found the courage to walk through the door.

That was one big house dog. This was the closest that I had been to a St. Bernard dog. The nose of the dog seemed to come up to my waist. She asked me to sit down. I elected to sit in a chair instead on the couch. I wanted to keep some space around me. Sue sat on the couch.

My next surprise was getting ready to happen. The dog got on the couch and stretched out over Sue’s legs. His nose was at one end of the couch and his tail was touching the other end of the couch. A small dog jumping up to sit in his owner’s lap would not surprise me, but a St. Bernard dog climbing up on his owner’s lap was not expected. I sat in the chair looking at a very unusual sight. I wondered if I was actually seeing what I thought I was seeing?

I am not easily rattled, but I had met my match. I started working on focusing my attention from the dog to Sue. I could see a resemblance of Doris Day’s face to her face. The contest must have occurred at least fifteen years earlier. Sue exceeded my ideal size of a woman by a bunch of pounds instead of a few pounds. I guessed she was about five foot four inches tall and weighed about two hundred pounds.

I was struggling with ending the date or going to eat breakfast. I decided to go on with the date. I thought I would start to feel better once I got into a setting where I had a little control of what was happening. I told myself that I had enjoyed talking with her on the phone. I should go on and make the best of the situation. As we got ready to go to the restaurant, I wonder if Sue was going to kiss the dog goodby. I felt better when she did not kiss the dog goodby.

While driving to the restaurant, I made a mental list of topics that I could use to start a conversation if we had a time when no one was talking. We arrived at the restaurant and went in.

Because of Sue’s size, I wondered how much she would eat. We ordered our food. She ordered a typical size meal. I got her talking about her dog, the donut shop, places she had lived, what she wanted to do in the future, and her hobbies. I worked to make myself relax and just followed the conversation topics. Even though most of our interests were not the same, Sue was a good conversationalist. From time to time, I found myself wondering how many donuts she ate each day.

She said her dog was an English Sheep dog. This surprised me, because as a boy, I had two English Sheep dogs. I found out the dogs I had were miniature English Sheep dogs. As the meal drew to a close, I starting thinking about how I was going to end the date. I had set the stage that I had to go somewhere later in the morning so I had a reason to not stay and visit after I took her home. I did not want to go into her house. I had not shaken off the impact of having the nose of a big dog’s head pointing at me through the storm door. It was not that I did not like dogs. My son’s dog stayed at my house. She was a small dog, and I enjoyed her company.

As I drove to Sue’s home, I wondered how I was going to say goodby to her. I had no interest in kissing her goodby. I walked her to the door. I think she had reached the same conclusion that this would be our only date. Both of us indicated that we enjoyed the breakfast which was true. She went in to see her dog, and I walked to my car.

As I drove back to my home, I was trying to make sense of what had happened. I decided this was my first and last blind date. It was time for me to go to the grocery store.


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