Having a Date Night tonight. Date Night, for the uninitiated, is when a sucker true family friend offers to baby-sit your kids (sometimes for free!!!!) while you and your spouse go out on a date. Which you haven’t done in nearly a decade. And here I thought since we were married I didn’t have to date anybody anymore. I personally haven’t dated in 8 years. Have to admit, I’m actually a bit nervous. If form holds, for Date Night, I will probably show up an hour late, forget my breath spray and spill marinara all down the front of me.

I really am getting nervous. If form holds, I’ll forget the way to her house, call her mother by the wrong name, and absent-mindedly eat an onion-based entrée at dinner which will follow me around for the next three days.

If form holds, I’ll get a flat tire in her driveway and have to admit to her dad that I don’t know how to change it. And that I don’t have a jack or a spare in the trunk, but I do have a set of baseball cards from 1992 and 4,000 needles from the time I tried to jam into it a Christmas tree, purchased as a holiday dorm room decoration.

If form holds, her older brother will ask me about cars and ask me how much I can bench, then challenge me to a bench-off and rip me for not spotting him correctly while I will not be able to so much as cover my mouth for a sneeze without extreme agony for the next two weeks.

If form holds, I’ll leave my wallet on the dresser but won’t realize it until we get to the toll booth. At which point, I’ll have to ask her to borrow a dollar and, essentially, ask her to pay for the whole evening. Then drive like my grandma because I’ll be afraid to get pulled over.

My stomach is queasy. If form holds, my stomach will get knotted and will gurgle so loud people from across the way will look at me. I will not even be hungry.

If form holds, I will forget which theater the movie is in when I go to the bathroom and won’t get back for 15 minutes, then forget where we are sitting. If form holds, my parents will show up. Unannounced. And sit catty-cornered from us while I sweat profusely and pretend not to notice.

This can’t end well. If form holds, after stopping for gas, I’ll put the car in reverse instead of drive and take off into a motor oil display.

If form holds, I will have forgotten to print out reverse directions and find myself on roads that were meant strictly for All-Terrain Vehicles, as which my Toyota Corolla with no power steering will not qualify.

If form holds, I’ll stop on my way to drop off an overdue movie (on VHS!) and lock my keys in the car. While it’s running. In a handicapped spot. Honestly, I will not have known it was a handicapped spot –yes there will be that big picture of a wheelchair on the sign—but it would have been the fifth spot in the row. How many handicapped people do they really think would be dropping off their movies at the same time?

If form holds, I would need to call a locksmith because the police would not be an option in this instance. And the locksmith would give me a 2-hour window. So I’d search for a pay phone and bemoan the fact that they don’t make hand-held phones that you can carry with you in an emergency. Except that they indeed would have invented those already and I was too poor (i.e., cheap) to buy one. As it will be raining heavily, I will have to go back in the video store for at least two hours and pretend like I’m reading the back cover of each movie, twice, while keeping one eye out for the locksmith and making sure nobody handier than me is able to jimmy the lock and drive my car away.

If form holds, I will have to explain all this to all aggrieved parties, mostly my wife, but also our friends with whom we would have met. They most likely will say that one day we will all look back on this and still shake our heads.

But, if form holds, she’ll love me anyway.