When words failed me

One of my worst nightmares ever came true a few days back. No, I wasn’t abducted by aliens. Even if I were, I wouldn’t be terming the incident a nightmare; I would be terming it the most kick-ass thing ever to happen to me (probably ranking above the rare occasions when I retrieve all my socks from the dryer, without the dryer eating them up. So there. Now you have an idea of what constitutes excitement in my semblance of life). Anyway, the nightmare of an incident that I was talking about, was that I was out for coffee with a person for the first time, and I ran out of things to talk about, and yes, I froze! Right in the middle of a warm, sunny day, seated comfortably in a plush little chair, sipping on hot chocolate...I froze! No, the person who was accompanying me was not an ogre. He was quite a nice guy with all things right if you look at him from a woman’s perspective. Yeah, I know...why else would I be out with him in the first place, right? But even if you look at him from a man’s perspective, a doctoral degree in computer science from an Ivy-league doesn’t hurt, does it?

So anyway, I got to know this guy online - saw his profile at a site, liked it, we exchanged e-mails back and forth, chatted for a while, and then decided to meet for that ill-fated drink. Curiously enough, our online conversations are fun! At least I enjoy them; and going by our chat transcripts that are littered with hehes, hahas (no lols/lmaos/rotfls – we aren’t PhDs for nothing!) from both of us, I am tempted to believe that he has fun chatting with me as well. Or else, he definitely is a master of disguise. No, I am kidding. Yeah, I am not ready to take a blow to my already on-the-brink-of-being-crushed-ego by as much as considering that he didn’t like chatting with me.

So right, the day of the meeting dawns bright and clear, and we meet as decided. All is fine for a while, we talk about school, books, the city, the place where I am from, where he is from, the weather (not quite sure!), the travails of being a foreigner in this country and may be a few other things that rank in the negative on their earth-shattering importance level. So, I am sipping on my hot chocolate, and it occurs to me that something doesn’t feel right. I am contemplating that, but still unable to quite place my finger on it, when suddenly I hear him speak.

"Say something. Or else this meeting will go down as one where I had the 90% conversation time."

GULP!

Yeah, that was me gulping – in embarrassment! In horror! In trepidation! In helplessness!

I am quite sure I wouldn’t have been able to compartmentalise those uncalled for feelings so efficiently at that instant, but thinking in retrospect is a luxury that I indulge in. And it isn’t without benefits; you, my readers, get to delve into the recesses of my mind in situations where I am cornered on account of that luxury. So there I am, under pressure to say something, and unconsciously I blurt out a gem of a statement that would without doubt take the cake in the annals of "first-meeting-fucks-ups" if at all anyone decided to create something like that.

"I didn’t come prepared with a list of topics to discuss with you."

Yeah, right. That was the smart-ass me, trying to salvage a situation. But all I ended up doing was to dig a grave and bury that meeting while it still had some vestige of life in it. So there lies my first-ever meet with a guy in this country, at that cute little Belgian café. And in case you are wondering, the epitaph on the grave that I single-handedly dug reads:

For her 10% contribution to the conversation.
When words failed her on 17 May, 2009.