How match.com got me into trouble... Part I

My favorite coffee shoppe and sandwich place is right across the street from where I go to school. I've been going there for the last 2 1/2 years. The pic above is one that I took from inside the shop; ironically they don't serve pasta and never have to my knowledge. That shoppe has been with me as I cycled through bacon egg and cheese breakfast tacos to bean and spinach breakfast tacos back to bacon egg and cheese (I would later completely shun the B.E.C. bkfst taco because I swear there was something sketchy about the new bacon they started using); it was there through my hot tea phase (yerba matte = gross, by the way); my fruit smoothie phase ($4 for something that costs like $.50 to make... not a smart investment on my part); the shwarma addiction of 2005; and my discovery that it possessed the best Philly Cheesesteak in all of Texas. I wrote my Torts final, my first Legal Research & Writing Memo, my Economic Justice paper and pieces of my Seminar paper on a green big chair in the front right corner which you have to move to find the outlet to plug in your laptop. I know what all of the art that has never been sold there looks like because it's been hanging on the wall for over a year- some of it involves yarn. E. Larson and I had one of our first dates there hanging outside under the awning one Saturday. I am pretty sure Russell (my best law guy friend) made me cry at least once in that shoppe. I took many a journey across the street to buy a fountain cola with Russell. The Italian Stallion is apparently key, though I've never tried it. Needless to say, it possesses bunches of sentimental value from my life over the last several years and always has a plethora of cute if not greasy-haired hipster artist/musician/writer guys that man its counters, affixed stickers on the cash registers that say things like "Sparkle Motion" (a shout out to the quintessential film for hipsters everywhere "Donnie Darko"), in addition to a mean Philly Cheesesteak.

I haven't been since January. Since the day I became a paying subscriber of match.com. When I discovered that I had match.com messages from the owner of this fair shoppe, who had seen my pic on the match and recognized me and decided to initiate flirtations with me. I tried to let him down easily as I was not really interested- he's in his thirties, very nice (let me totally cut in line one morn I was ridiculously hungover before clase), attractive, but a little too hyper and spacy and coffee shop guy for me. Plus I didn't want to never be able to go to his shop again- so I tried to move into the friend zone. He started asking me filter questions like: do you like TV On The Radio? His instant messages included a smiley face emoticon on literally every line of text. He seems like a perfectly sweet, well-meaning dude- just not the dude I want to date right now. It got awkward. Really really awkward. And I haven't been able to manage to step in the door since.

' <--- that is a tear

Farewell, favourite coffee and sandwich shoppe of yore... we had some good times. The best and the worst. Maybe one day during a trek back to my alma for on-campus interviewing I will finally be able to gather up the nerve to walk inside again and order a delicious, delicious cheesesteak. Who knows- maybe Russell will be there too. The bad yarn art will undoubtedly be there still; and a new round of stickers and cute boys will probably have cycled in.

This is all of your fault, match.com