How I Got the Girl

I love telling this tale to just about anyone who will listen.  Hopefully some of my readers like love stories, so buddy, this one goes out to you.

I was working for Habitat for Humanity after college, and one of the events put on by the organization was a big fundraiser/gala event where all the bigwigs came out, waved their monocles around, and threw cash at the organization so we could keep helping poor people.  As "volunteers", we were being tapped to help out at this thing.

Now, I had no interest in spending a night volunteering when I could be at home, pantsless, reading Reddit.  But my darn Midwestern sensibilities wouldn't let me refuse a direct request, so I agreed to come along and help out.

One of the requirements of this gala was that everyone had to wear formal wear with a hint of construction - people wore caution tape ties, duct tape hats, steel toed boots, and so on.  It looked quite strange when paired with formal wear.  I had some bright orange nylon straps (for attaching wooden planks to truck roofs), and turned them into a belt and suspenders.  Hooray last minute craftiness!

At the event, it turned out, like many obligations, to be much more fun than I had expected.  I was put in charge of a game called Hammerschlagen, which basically consists of a drinking game revolving around whacking a stump with hammers.  Good times.  And most of these bigwigs turned out to be former fratboys, so they insisted that I had to have a drink in my hand at all times.  Very fun.

Towards the end of the night, the games were shut down and we were all funneled into the central ballroom, where music was playing and people were drunkenly dancing.  I was tipsy, wandered around, and bumped into my very drunk boss.  I next had to quickly dive in and stop her from "twerking" on her boss, a board member.

After preventing this potential disaster, my eye fell on a flash of red.  A gorgeous girl in a tight red dress, the outfit hugging every curve and showing off an amazing hourglass figure, was dancing over on the side of the room!  And in my tipsy state, I was just lubricated enough to feel that I might have a shot with her.

I went staggering over, noting as I approached that she was wearing a child's construction vest over her shoulders.  In the epitome of smoothness, I came dancing up, tugged this vest from her shoulders, and informed her that it would look much better on me.

Somehow, this theft of her clothing didn't seem to turn the girl off, and we shared grins as we danced together.  The song ended and the girl asked for her vest back; I told her that it now belonged to me, and she'd have to give me her number to set up the next time she could get it back when she met me in person.

"Like a date?"

"Yeah, like a date."  Oh yeah, man.  So smooth.

Perhaps it was the alcohol (in my system, not hers - she later revealed she was sober for all of this!), but I felt totally cool as I swapped phone numbers with her and tried to prevent my eyes from lingering too long on what lay beneath that red dress.  The party was ending, the band was done, and I had to dash to go help clean up.

The whole ride back home (I had carpooled, hence the drinking), I was bragging to my coworkers about this great girl I had met.  They listened politely, and I went to bed happy, with a child's construction vest sitting on the foot of my bed.