Date Night

Someone posted a note on Facebook that tonight is date night.  Friday night is, i suppose, a good night for a date.  I have some friends, a couple, who almost every Friday night go to their favorite Mexican restaurant.  They have been doing this for so long that the restaurant has their favorite table reserved, they know them by name and their favorite waitress can anticipate what they will order.  Standing date, this is their time together to process the week and catch up.

I have single friends who cannot stand to be home.  They go out to the local "clubs" and meet up with other singles with the hope that there will be a fresh face in the crowd, you know, the one that will rock their world...or at least make their world a little less lonesome...or even take them from the world on singleness to coupledom in one fell swoop.

Sometimes on Friday night it is time to go to the latest release on the cineplex. Of course a single runs the risk of running into the couples on dates and being reminded that they are, again, alone on a Friday night.  Not so bad really.  It just sometimes causes one to think twice about going out and ending up staying home.  Home is not so bad.

Home is where the heart is.  If you are lucky, you have a dog or two and maybe a cat or two and tweety birds and the like.  Your dogs give you that unconditional love you long for especially if you feed them their favorite dry kibble mixed with some canned dog food in that special way you give it to them every night all mixed up and on the floor near the door to the porch.  You know, the way you do every night and every morning, day in, day out, week in, week out.  It is a comfortable routine.

And your cats, God bless 'em, bring you presents like dead little birds and rats that were unlucky enough to venture into your yard.  They are so proud and you praise the enthusiastically as you use the dustpan to scoop up the sad little corpses all the while wondering if you should bury them and thinking about the little lives cut short.  Ultimately you wrap them up and put them in the brown can for pick up.

So that is date night.  It is sometimes just nice to sit quietly and think.  At the twilight you may realize there are worse fates than being home without a special someone.  You could be with a special someone who is not really that special and who you really would rather not be with.  It is a warm late spring evening and you go out on your porch to just reflect and then a bird begins to screech on the next street or the that idiot on the next block revs his engine as he often does loudly and longly.  Another neighbor's little girl decides it is fun to scream and scream and scream again for no obvious reason other than it annoys the heck out her brother and, incidently, everyone else with in earshot.

Its at times like these when on a Friday night, when you are thinking about not having a date that little things may irritate you more and you know that you are getting, as they say, older.  So you remind yourself not to be a cranky old fart and relax.  It will all pass.  And strangely enough, it does.  The sun dips below the horizon, the sky all pink and blue fades to darkness and night creeps in like a blanket to bring you calm.  

It is date night and you find that maybe you are with the best date you could ever have had.  After all, even though your fantasies were inspired by Lady and the Tramp, not all fantasies are meant to come true.