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You many have gotten the impression by now that I was always the one dumped in all these relationships.  But there was one time when I was the dumper, not the dumpee.  During my senior year in high school, my mom was always on the lookout for “eligible” daughters of friends or friends of friends.  One time she found this girl, also a senior but at a different high school, named Jill Gedelman.  My mother gave me her phone number and after a week or two of agonizing over how to approach her, I finally made the call.

She was very nice on the phone and politely ignored how nervous and flustered I sounded. It probably wasn’t the first time a boy had trouble asking her for a date.  When I finally stammered out the request to meet her and maybe go out, she was very gracious and accepted.  Our first date was to take place on a Saturday night and it was to be dinner followed by a movie.

She lived a long way away from me and it took me nearly an hour to get there.  The last few minutes were frantic because I had underestimated the amount of time to traverse the distance.  But get there I did and after composing myself, I went up to her door and rang the bell.

The girl who greeted me was quite cute, perhaps even beautiful.  She had long brown hair with bangs and was wearing a pretty print dress and a white sweater.  She invited me in and we went into her living room to sit and talk for a bit.  Her parents came in to meet me and they were very nice as well.  At last, it was time to go so I drove us to a nearby restaurant.  We exchanged small talk but at that point, I already knew something was wrong.

Men and women can only follow one of two tracks.  One is the genderless friend track.  The other is the sex-based track where you consider each other as potential partners and bed-mates.  You usually know which track you are on the very first time you meet someone of the opposite sex.  That doesn’t mean that over time you can’t cross over.  My second wife was my best friend for a long time until she crossed over.  You can also discover over time that even though you thought you were attracted to somebody, it turns out you weren’t but you can remain friends.

In this case I knew right away that there was no spark and that at best, she was a candidate for the genderless friend track.  While we were talking I was weighing the pros and cons of whether I wanted to become friends with her.  There really was no upside in that she lived so far away, went to a different school and making the effort to get to know her better seemed pointless.

So at the end of the meal, when it was time to go to the movie, I asked her if we could go back to her house instead.  She was puzzled but said OK.  When I got her home, I walked her up to the front step and told her that I didn’t feel any attraction for her and didn’t really see it going anywhere and that I wanted to just call it a night.

The look of hurt on her face has haunted me ever since.  She asked if it was anything she had said or done and I told her no but I didn’t want to take the time to explain it.  I just wanted to get out of there.  She said OK and good night and went into the house.

As I was driving home, I was relieved but now, in the years that have gone by, I have always wondered if I had done something really stupid.  She was a very nice, pretty Jewish girl. She was very intelligent and had a number of interests. I have since learned that attraction can grow over time and on the basis of a single meeting, I had elected to never even consider the possibility. Since this is the essence of your show, I look to you, the Producers, to perhaps give me an opportunity to rectify this mistake.  I’d love a chance to see her again and find out if maybe there could have been a connection, if only I had given it a chance.