Palm Springs and first dates




Palm Springs has actually been a frequent destination since I was little. Living in Long Beach, my family could be by the pool in just a little over two hours. It’s funny how many details of those trips suddenly came to mind this past weekend–little details I hadn’t thought about in years! There was the time my girlfriend Emy and her family came with us and there was a huge earthquake that sent everyone fleeing in bikinis. The time I drove my mom and I in my parents’ Mercedes and we spun out on Hwy 60. The time I snuck into the Spa bathroom to borrow a magazine, and saw Kate Moss on one of her first covers: Seventeenmagazine. The time my high school girlfriends and I realized (first with excitement and then disappointment) that we were the only girls at our hotel. And the time Aron and I first shared a date shake out at Hadley Fruit Farm.

I had all but forgotten about another first: I sort of had my first date in Palm Springs! My parents let me go to lunch with a boy I had met by the pool; we walked downtown to Hamburger Hamlet in the blazing sun. I remember that I wanted some money so that I could offer to split the bill and my parents gave me $5. (And no, I’m not that old, so this wasn’t very much money back then either.) I think dad–being the old-fashioned guy that he is–thought the boy should really pay.

I scanned the menu anxiously and saw that I could only afford the French onion soup. And so I ordered French onion soup and a glass of water. As if this weren’t already the most ridiculous thing to get on even a sort-of-date (a bowl full of stinky onions with stringy cheese), this was in the summer! In the desert!

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Guess what? He ordered the same thing. (And paid.)
What’s your first date story? How old were you?

[Top photos taken at the Ace Hotel in Palm Springs–which I can’t wait to go back to]

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