Worst Date Ever

This is not only the worst date ever, but the worst week and the worst vacation ever. It was the late 70’s. I was living in a small university town – Bloomington, Indiana. A guy I had dated, Barry, moved to California. He invited me to come out and visit and mentioned that he was living with a group of friends. Seemed perfectly innocent to me. So, I decided to vacation a bit in the great West. Little did I realize.

I took the night flight and I still remember feeling every bone in my body saying “stay home – stay home”.
But, did I pay attention? No, of course not.

Got off the plane at some ungodly hour. We went to this big house in San Francisco. A really big house.
He sent me to the “girls dorm” to rest up – the “girls dorm”? Well, I was too tired to think much about it and tried to get some rest. In the evening, we attended a dinner and a presentation.

I was still feeling somewhat disoriented and not clear about what was going on. I asked him what this group was and what was his involvement. He was really vague. And romance was still clouding my vision. Then, he took me off to a “special event”.

We drove out at night. We arrive at a camp somewhere in the Redwood Forest. I was told this is temporary since the site they usually use is closed due to an injunction. Okay, so now I (finally) start to wake up. But, of course, there I was in the middle of nowhere wondering what to do.

I spent the next three days in a tent. In the cold. In Northern California. In April. Doing calisthenics at dawn and attending endless lectures in the woods about theology and the nature of God. Fortunately I had been raised Catholic. And, once you have dealt with grade school nuns, very little can really shake you.

I kept asking to leave. Barry kept being evasive. By the third day, he and his “friends” finally relented.
He took me into San Francisco and deposited me with an old friend of his who was not involved with this group.

As most of you have guessed by now that I had fallen into the hands of the Reverend Moon cult. And all the vagueness they practiced was called “heavenly deception”. Not so heavenly to me.

When I got home, I wanted to kiss the ground. But it was the Midwest, the land of common sense and sensibility and we don’t do that sort of thing. So that is how heavenly deception turned into the date from hell.