[From http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/freaks-and-geeks-girlfriends-and-boyfriends-99815]
Todd’s embarrassing story corner: (In which we embrace the spirit of the program and share embarrassing stories from our own adolescence. This week: dating.) By the time I was a junior in high school, I had sort of “figured out” the dating thing, in that I seemed to have girlfriends with a surprising amount of frequency for a band geek from the middle of nowhere. Granted, they lived all over the tri-state area, but that was nothing to someone who had been legally driving since 14 and owned his grandmother’s shitty old car outright. Around Christmas of 1997, though, I found myself with that oldest of sitcom chestnuts: two girls who were interested in me. The first, Emily (name changed), was someone I had actually been dating for a few months, but we saw each other rarely, and both of us had enough religious baggage to have never made it further than quietly holding hands. The second, Jane (also changed), was a girl who lived closer and—though also religious—seemed like she might actually let me kiss her at some point or another. This was the winter of Titanic, a film I had gotten myself psyched up for thanks to the glowing reviews on Ain’t It Cool News (my homepage at the time), and I had convinced Jane to go on a date with me to see the film. Now, I should have broken up with Emily, but since I was reasonably certain she would never find out (and, indeed, if she happens to read this article, she will just be finding out now, and I’m sorry), I figured why throw away a sure thing in favor of one that was not. On the other hand, I didn’t want to just break up with her out of the blue at Christmas. I began having Emily’s friends pepper her with hints that I might be breaking up with her, and she would receive the “answer” as to whether I would or not when I came up to visit her the week before Christmas. Emily, a sweet girl who already thought we were marked for marriage, wrote me daily e-mails asking if I was going to break up with her, at which point I would ask her how she would have gotten that idea, before sending an e-mail to another friend to let her know I was thinking about breaking up with Emily. (Come to think of it, this story just makes me sound like a sociopath. Onward!) Long story somewhat shorter: The date with Jane didn’t go so well, so I made her go to the mall with me and pick out a gift for Emily that wouldn’t cost too much money, which she did with gentle good humor. When I drove up to Emily’s house to take her out for dinner—an unplanned stop an hour away (and almost three hours from my home) I caught shit from my parents. I gave her the present (a necklace), then acted as if the whole thing was an attempt to make her worry about our relationship so she could realize the true gift of Christmas was me. To her credit, she didn’t let me make out with her.
(An embarrassing story corner tangent: Later that month, I went to see Titanic again—as was the style at the time—with some good friends I’d met at academic camp. One of the girls said I just had to meet her friend, who would be going to the movie with us, but as we all gathered at Chi Chi’s—a celebration of food—for a pre-movie meal, the angriest, loudest girl I’d ever seen in my life stomped in and started shouting about how the movie was sold out, so they wouldn’t get to see the film with us. I, taken aback by this abrasive young woman, had no idea why my friend would want us to meet and promptly started hitting on one of the other girls who went to the movie with us—despite still dating Emily. The angry young woman would stomp off into the night. And that angry young woman? Well, kids, that’s how I met your mother. But we’ll get to that!)
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Freaks and Geeks – Lady
