I signed up for the April Camp NaNoWriMo challenge, but, with so many things going on in my life at the time, I quit after the first week. However, I’ll get the chance to do better in a few months, when I try again during the July Camp NaNoWriMo challenge.

I’m not sure what I’ll write about in July. I read a lot of memoirs, so during the past couple of years I wrote—care to guess?—memoirs. I titled one of them Adventures in Working and the other, Adventures in Learning.

I’m thinking I should write a memoir titled Adventures in Dating. Or, possibly, Dating in the Dark Ages. I’ve been out of the dating game since 1974, when I met late Other Half. However, my dating experiences prior to that, especially the ones during high school and college, were sometimes interesting. For example, I didn’t like being pressured into blind dates, but one of them did turn out okay—until I caught him with another girl.

Then there was the night my best friend, Kate, talked me into a blind date with a guy who I swear had gray hair. I was seventeen. Years later, I wrote a, um, creative nonfiction anecdote about that experience and had it published in a newspaper. My anecdote was included in a reporter’s feature article on Valentine’s Day. I titled the piece “My Date Set My Best Friend on Fire.” I knew it couldn’t miss and it didn’t. My entry was the first bad date featured in the article.

On another night, Kate and I sort of ditched a couple of rather annoying guys at a drive-in movie. We told them we were going to the ladies room. We lied. Instead, Kate was about to call a cab when a couple of girls I often saw at a local nightspot walked by, heard part of our conversation, and assumed that we’d been dumped. After they introduced themselves, Kate and I realized they were the sister and cousin of a girl who had just married Kate’s former boyfriend.

Our new acquaintances didn’t think Kate should waste her money on a cab. Neither did Kate. So we spent the rest of the movie sitting in the sister’s car, mostly chatting about the bride and groom. Kate didn’t let on that she had been new brother-in-law’s great love. (Kate had dumped him for another guy.) And I kept my mouth shut.

When we went back to our dates at the end of the night, they didn’t ask why it took us so long to get back to them. And we didn’t even attempt to make up an explanation.

Years later, I also wrote up that dating experience and got it published.