By Eli Farrington and Noah Pond

Dimly lit fluorescent lights hung from the ceiling as the unromantic scent of beans and gasoline wafted through the air. It was Valentine’s Day, and sophomore mechanical engineering major Jaimie Lerma was on her first date with her highschool boyfriend. 

“I wanna say I was like 16 or 17,” Lerma said. I got taken to a burrito place next to a gas station, and his mom gave him money to pay for the both of us, and then he made me pay for myself so that he could keep the extra change. We also got Build-A-Bears afterwards and I had to pay for both of them.” 

Lerma’s first date gone wrong resulted in a three year high school relationship, but despite her underwhelming past with Valentine’s Day, her experiences have not all been bad. 

Nowadays, Lerma is in a happy relationship with her current boyfriend, who she describes as very sweet. Her favorite Valentine’s Day memories include beachside picnics and fun adventures with him. 

Some folks don’t have a particularly bad date to look back on, but instead a lack thereof. The dean of arts, humanities, and social studies, Jeff Crane is in this boat. 

“Does having multiple lonely valentines without a girlfriend or partner count?” Crane said. “Many sad lonely valentines.”

Luckily for Crane, he has happily spent the past 30 Valentine’s Days with his wife, and won’t have to go through one of those lonely days ever again. 

Like Crane’s, some stories start off slow and build towards a happy ending, but for one Cal Poly Humboldt student who requested to be referred to as Alex, his experience was the complete opposite. 

Alex’s date started off strong, with a trip to the beach, ice cream, a pit-stop at an arcade, and then a nice dinner. 

“It was like a triple date. Honestly, it was on its way to being the best first date.”

The date began to take a turn for the worst when the pair decided to go on grinder together as a joke and look at other people in their vicinity. 

“I was on, you know, Grinder next to him and he was [too]. We were talking to each other, like, as a joke, and then someone pops up zero feet away, and we’re like ‘Sure, what the hell.’” 

The trio wound up in Alex’s car, with Alex sitting in the driver’s seat and his date sitting in the back with their new addition. 

“So I invite this man into my car,” Alex said. “And I was not feeling it, and I thought, you know, he would maybe take the hint, but you know what — he [Alex’s date] just ended up getting fingered in the back seat of my car while I was scrolling on TikTok. The other guy didn’t wanna finger [my date] with his own spit because he didn’t have any lube or whatever. I was like ‘whatever’ and then I went and got lotion out of my bag just so that he could finish and I could get the other guy out of my car.”

Some first dates are so bad that they just can’t seem to end soon enough. This was the case for Alex. Even though he and his date never saw each other again, they still send each other Instagram Reels. 

Eli Farrington is the opinion editor, and Noah Pond is the managing editor for The Lumberjack. In their free time, they like to encourage and support each other in becoming the intelligent, creative, and passionate men of tomorrow.