Why You Should Never Order Squishy Food on a Date

It was a Friday evening, and I had taken a woman named Rachel to a cozy little place with red lanterns, wooden tables, and enough steam rising from the kitchen to make everything look romantic. The tables were crowded, and the smell of fried garlic and ginger made it impossible to pretend I wasn’t hungry.

Rachel looked ravishing. I looked reasonably presentable. Things were going well.

Then, the server handed me chopsticks. I should have known trouble was coming. I am perfectly comfortable eating with a fork. A spoon and I have a long-standing friendship. Even a knife has never betrayed me. Chopsticks, however, are different. They require the precision of a surgeon, the patience of a monk, and the hand-eye coordination of someone who has apparently practiced. I had not practiced.

Suddenly, I was trying very hard to look like a man who had his life together. More importantly, I was trying to look like a man who knew what he was doing with chopsticks. I did not.

When our steamed dumplings arrived, I realized I should have ordered noodles. Noodles stay where you put them. Dumplings have other ambitions.

Rachel was telling me a story while I picked up a steamed dumpling with my chopsticks. I wanted to look relaxed and confident, as though I had been eating Chinese food with chopsticks since childhood. In reality, I was holding that dumpling like it was a live fish. The dumpling was soft, slippery, and coated in sauce. It wobbled between the chopsticks. I squeezed the chopsticks tighter. The dumpling wobbled again.

Rachel noticed.

“Careful,” she said, laughing. “Are you sure you’ve got that?”

“Absolutely.”

I should have kept my mouth shut.

I lifted the dumpling toward my mouth while continuing our conversation. I was attempting to maintain eye contact, talk, and operate two wooden sticks at the same time. That was too much responsibility for one man. Halfway there, the slippery little traitor escaped. It shot off my chopsticks.

I froze.

Rachel froze.

The dumpling disappeared so quickly that I briefly wondered if the restaurant had a hidden magic trick. One second, it was between my chopsticks. The next, it had launched itself in space and vanished.

I immediately began looking for it.

“Where did it go?” I asked. I looked beside my plate. I checked the floor. I even slyly glanced at the neighboring tables, to my relief, there was absolutely nothing.

As I was investigating the disappearance of the flying dumpling, I suddenly realized Rachel was mysteriously silent. So, midway during my investigation, I looked at her. To my astonishment, Rachel had her eyes surprisingly wide open, almost like a vengeful stare.

Concerned, I asked, “Is everything alright?” She didn’t answer and continued with the diabolic stare. I don’t know why, but for a brief moment, I felt like the helpless priest in ‘The Exorcist’. Then she looked down, and back at me with that piercing stare.

“Oh, my God.”

“What?”

She pointed at herself.

The missing dumpling had landed on the front of her dress, right at her cleavage. The dumpling sat there with an almost insulting calmness. Rachel recoiled so suddenly that her chair nearly moved backward.

For one horrible second, my brain simply stopped working. I had no idea whether to apologize, grab a napkin, pretend I had seen nothing, or quietly ask the restaurant staff if they had an emergency protocol for airborne dumplings.

“No! No, no, no!”

I stared. She was already staring.

“Are you serious?”

“I didn’t do that.”

“You absolutely did!”

“I mean, not intentionally.”

“I can explain,” I said.

Rachel raised an eyebrow, with her eyes still wide open.

“Can you?”

“No.”

She stared at me in disbelief, half horrified and half trying not to laugh.

And then, I panicked. And panic, as I discovered that evening, does not always produce intelligent decisions.

Instead of handing Rachel a napkin like a normal human being, I picked up my chopsticks. leaned forward and reached for the dumpling.

Rachel’s eyes became even more enormous.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m getting it.”

“With the chopsticks?”

“I’ve got it.”

“You are not….”

“Please tell me you’re joking.”

“Stop! Are you seriously trying to pick a dumpling off my chest with chopsticks?”

Suddenly, the buzz of voices and clattering cutlery in the restaurant vanished. There was an eerie silence in the restaurant, with many eyes staring at our table.

Rachel immediately leaned backward.

“Stop!”

That finally broke me. It almost felt like my panic-stricken version finally snapped itself free from the mouth of madness and emerged in the real world. Rachel was still shaking her head in disbelief. Thankfully, after a long pause she started laughing, and I joined in.

“You’re unbelievable,” she said.

With a sheepish grin, I said, “I was just trying not to waste food.”

“You were trying to turn our first date into a Chinese takeout emergency.”

I offered her a napkin. Rachel retrieved the dumpling and dropped it onto my plate.

“There,” she said. “Your little runaway has been returned.”

I looked at the defeated dumpling.

“I think we’re breaking up.”

“We’ve been dating for forty-five minutes.”

“Exactly. It’s going badly.”

That made her laugh, and the embarrassment finally disappeared.

And strangely enough, that ridiculous moment became the best part of the date. It reminded me that dates are not auditions for perfection.

And somewhere between the embarrassment and the laughter, I realized something. A date doesn’t have to go perfectly to go well. In fact, sometimes the ridiculous disasters are what make two people relax around each other.

We try so hard to appear confident, charming, sophisticated, and interesting that we sometimes forget the person sitting across from us is probably nervous too. We want everything to go perfectly, when sometimes the moments that go spectacularly wrong are the ones that make us comfortable with each other.

Rachel and I spent the rest of the evening joking about the “flying dumpling incident.”

I also learned something I have never forgotten. When you’re on a date, order food you can actually control.

Because romance is unpredictable enough without giving your dinner a head start.

And if something squishy flies off your plate, do not search for it with chopsticks until you know where it landed.

Thank you for taking the time to read. It means a lot.

Ansel

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This post was previously published on medium.com.