In the canon of my stories, tales of my romantic past are bound to come to light. I have been often referred as ‘charming’ by one person and an ‘idiot’ by another within the span of three minutes. I prefer the term, ‘Idiotically Charming,’ and depending on the situation, idiot more often than not takes the helm. And, for that reason, I have many more times than otherwise made a mess of things with the opposite sex.

One time in particular comes to mind, as we race through October. After spending two years at Tufts in Boston, I transferred to my hometown college, in Bowling Green. Great decision on my part. However, I left a number of friends in Boston and returned the October after transferring, for a visit during Homecoming weekend.

My friends were part of a big house and every year, during Homecoming, the house they owned hosted a gigantic three-story party. A band or DJ performed on the second floor while cocktails were available on every floor and shenanigans abounded.

Around nine PM, as I laughed with some of my buddies, I heard a sharp yell.

“Oh my God, I’d heard you’d returned but I didn’t believe it.”

A tiny brunette, very pretty, ran up to me and gave me a large hug. Flattered, I acted as excited as possible as I realized this young lady owned a momentous crush on me. At the same time, I realized, that even though I recognized this person, I had NO IDEA how I knew her and more important, I did not know her name. Now perhaps I could have sloughed this egregious error with a polite, “Oh my God yes, your name, it’s on the tip of my tongue,” or some other fake way around not knowing her name, alas I failed.

And so, I spent the next few hours, laughing, dancing, speaking in awkward sentences as to not draw out my lack of knowledge of her name, buying her cocktails and asking every single person within a ten-mile radius if they knew this pretty person’s name. I came up bupkis.

Finally, around one AM, perhaps after one Meisterbrau too many, I made a syntax mistake and spoke a comment that should’ve used her name. She looked at me with sad, brown eyes and exclaimed, “You don’t remember my name.”

I apologized profusely and made up a cockamamie excuse of being gone six months, and tired from the travel, yada yada blah blah. She looked at me with a serious gaze.

“Okay. I will give you one chance. You and I took a Hitchcock film class together, last spring.”

“Okay,” I slowly nodded.

“My first name is the name of a Hitchcock film.”

You see, Hitchcock only has two film titles with females names. I had a fifty-fifty shot at getting this question correct and deducing being one of my strengths, I knew the answer. But sometimes in life we are presented with Door #1 and Door #2. Door #1, I give the correct answer and we have a fun weekend. Or, OR… I open Door #2 and have a story for decades. I choose the latter door.

“Is it Psycho?”

She turned beet red and stormed off, as I called after her.

“North by Northwest, To Catch a Thief, Notorious, Topaz?!?! Is it Topaz?!? I feel like it’s Topaz!“

She turned and shouted, ” IT’S Rebecca!!”

And I never saw her again. I still think I choose the correct door.

I’ll be sending another blog tomorrow where I will present the first weekly Bartender of the Week. Until then my friends, take my advice; pull down your pants and slide on the ice.