Patrick's First Date

Patrick (being the show-off he is) could not ease into this dating thing slowly. No. That wouldn't be epic...and his life is nothing, if not epic.

If you're Patrick, you must go out on a date on your 16th birthday. I yanked his chain for awhile and told him that technically, since he was born in Illinois at 9:48 AM, he would not be 16 until it was 11:48 PM here...and he could go out then. He didn't buy it.

So, here is the record of Patrick's first date, for posterity:

He asked friend, Sarah. I love Sarah. She is fun and funny and cute...and I love her mom, too. Patrick says Sarah has "purple gears", which is a clever way to say that she has a very unique and intelligent sense of humor.

They are both in the school play together (shocker) so I picked them up from play practice at 5. (Since the driving age is 18 over here, it makes things a little more challenging for these guys...but everyone is in the same boat together, so it doesn't end up being too big of a deal.)

They were going to end up short on time (since it was a school night). So I picked up dinner at Curry House CoCo Ichibanya and had it waiting for them. (And I stopped at the car wash to vacuum out the back of the van to make it presentable. It was a date, after all!) They ate their dinner on the road, and had very "date like" conversation.



(See the little brown boxes? They are Coco's collector spoons...very popular. I picked up two and dubbed them the "Patrick's First Date Commemorative Spoon". There are only two in existence!)



This was Patrick's chosen destination...Wagoland...otherwise known as "Family Land"

(Trivia: The A in Japanese always has the short "ahh" sound...but before I knew that, I read this as "Way-go-land"...which I thought sounded like someone with a speech impediment trying to say, "Legoland".)

Anyhoo, this is where we dropped them off (with my camera....gulp!) to commence dating. Cliff and I went and had a little date of our own. *Wink!*

I'll let the rest of these pics speak for themselves.
























































OK, these are just nuts! They demonstrate beautifully the fact that teenagers think they are bullet-proof!










Mr. Big-Spendah! (Like his card wallet? He made that himself.)












I picked them up about 8:30 and dropped them off down the street from our neighborhood (at the Baskin Robbins) to walk home from there.

(Trivia: Japanese Baskin Robbins' can be an adventure...the names of the flavors are in English, but not the descriptions...and sometimes the names are of no help. {And of course the employees don't speak English either.} AND, they can have some pretty non-traditional flavors. Like wasabe, or sweet potato...or weird combinations of things.)

Later, when I asked Patrick how it went, he said, "It was awesome! There wasn't one awkward moment the whole night!"

Well...that's what happens when you date a friend. I told him not to get used to that!