Valentine’s Day, AKA Single Awareness Day, is the day reserved for couples everywhere. If you’re not just purely annoyed by this Hallmark holiday, you’re bound to get a little bummed out if you don’t have a special someone on February 14.

But, as a Millennial in Oklahoma, let’s call him Rather Be Lonely*, discovered, there is something worse than being alone on Valentine’s Day, something much worse:

Being set up on a blind date on Valentine’s.

As the story goes, Rather Be Lonely was in college and without a girlfriend.  He planned to spend Valentine’s comfortably alone with only pizza and beer to keep him company. His roommate’s girlfriend (and we’ll use that term loosely considering she was cheating on her actual boyfriend with this guy, an entertaining nugget of info which only adds to this story) said she would set Rather Be Lonely up with one of her sorority sisters and they would double on the most romantic night of the year.

Like any member of Generation Y in his situation, Rather Be Lonely scoured Facebook looking at pictures trying to determine which girl she was going to set him up with. No luck. He had no idea what to expect.

What he found is best described in Rather Be Lonely’s own words:

“I was surprised when I arrived at the mid-priced Asian fusion chain restaurant to see my roommate’s lady-friend sitting next to a girl sparkling like a vampire from Twilight. I would have remembered seeing her picture online. As much as I’d love to say that I’m not like most guys and that appearance doesn’t matter to me, I was almost dumbstruck by how pale this girl was.”

Maybe he was dumbstruck rather than awestruck, but Rather Be Lonely figured it was Valentine’s Day afterall, what better day to meet someone? So, Rather Be Lonely put that aside, did his best to be charming and introduced himself. The Twilight vampire lookalike, let’s call her TVL for short, barely looked up from her phone, where her fingers were furiously flying over the keyboard, to say hello.

She continued to pound out text after text making no attempts to talk. Rather Be Lonely’s roommate and girl didn’t even offer respite from the awkward situation--they added to it (they were pretty occupied playing footsie and French kissing at the table).

According to Rather Be Lonely, when he tried harder to make conversation the best he could pull out of TVL was the following:

ME: So what do you study at school?
HER: (annoyed) I don’t like school.

ME: You know [so and so] from your sorority, right? What kind of stuff do you girls do?
HER: Sorority stuff.

Determined not to give up and trying to be sensitive (maybe she was really shy or had something going on), Rather Be Lonely tried again.

ME: Is everything all right? You seem pretty distracted by your phone.
HER: Setting up plans to go to a party after dinner.

Clearly things are going well for our hero, Rather Be Lonely. TVL had mumbled less than a dozen coherent sentences in 45 minutes and not only was already planning to ditch him, she openly told him the plan.

It was about then the two little lovebirds on the other side of the table come up for air and took note. Both look at Rather Be Lonely with “more pity than (he had) ever received from anyone before or since,” and his roommate’s girl says “I swear, I thought she would be nicer.”

At this point, Rather Be Lonely saw only option to ease the pain of this evening.

He started “consuming alcohol a bit more rapidly.”

The liquid courage helped him devise a plan and subscribe to a long-held dating practice, the little twist on the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as they do unto you.”

Rather Be Lonely then proceeds to whip out his own phone and text up a storm, whining to everyone he knew about his horrendous date. Then he flat out tried to bug her. Since the only real conversation he was getting on this date was with the waiter, Rather Be Lonely kept him around for as long as possible by asking him to create sauce combination after sauce combination when the food arrived. He even used his Chopsticks to perform a rousing rendition of Riverdance on the tabletop.

No dice.

TVL vampire lookalike never looked up from her phone.

Dating Disaster Lesson Learned: There is something worse than being alone on Valentine’s Day. Something infinitely worse.  You could get set up on the world’s worst blind date on Valentine’s Day.

Oh yeah, there’s more to this story. The icing on the cake, in Rather Be Lonely’s own words:

At the end of the evening, after the bill had been paid and our coats were on, I held the door for her as we all walked out to the parking lot. “I hope you don’t feel offended if I don’t call you.” I said.

She paused and looked up from her cell phone screen, shooting me a confused look. “Wait. Was this supposed to be a date?”

*Name changed to protect privacy, although this actually happened to Andrew Weitsman and he considers it only the third worst date of his life. I think I speak for everyone when I say, “my condolences.”

For more info:  Follow the Gen Y Dating Disaster series on the Examiner National Generation Y column in February to read real-life dating woes of Millennials across the country. Each funny and incredulous story will feature a dating lesson learned and a little commiserating (after all, who hasn’t had their own dating disaster?) For more information read, “Share your dating disaster story in upcoming series” and for more Gen Y Dating Disaster Stories, click here.