Chapter Four The Pity Date Challenge... A Dream Sequence.

Are you ready for a pity date challenge with our contestants, Jon and Sansa? The big question for today: Is this a pity date?

Sansa can you define a pity date?

Let me tell you my idea of a pity date. Actually this is more of a pitiful date but this is the first thing I can think of. OK a guy thinks he has to take me out because he has crashed into my car. And he's afraid of my father. So he asks me out for a run… not knowing I teach aerobics and ran track in high school. I say yes and go out for a run with the guy. Then halfway through the run I realize I'm besting him to the point where he arrives back at his vehicle absolutely winded. Then of course he develops chest pains. Furthermore the chest pains are so bad that I end up driving him to the emergency room in his huge Jeep. I can hardly even reach the pedals. Then to add to the insult he has to get into one of those hospital gowns where his butt hangs out and as far as the people in the emergency room are concerned I am his next of kin. Yes. That is a pitiful date. It didn't happen, but that's so pitiful.

Wait… wait! I've got another pity date for you. All right this is a pity not pitiful date. A guy crashes into your car and then you've got no way home. So of course he volunteers to take you home. But in the meantime he volunteers to take you to dinner. I get very sarcastic when I'm hungry. That's rude and I feel bad that I'm being rude. I try to be nice. Now you go to dinner and he tells you his whole sad pitiful life story. Then you find out during your conversation that he works for your father. He's totally embarrassed because he has totally screwed up. Or he's afraid he has totally screwed up his relationship with his mentor… your dad because his car demolished yours. So then he takes you home. Then trips out and goes for a run. That's a pity date! But not too bad because everybody's embarrassed.

OK, Jon. Your turn. What's a pity date for you?

Let me tell you about a pity date. OK. A pity date is when you have totally demolished a girl's car and it's not only just any random girl. She's gorgeous. You take her out to dinner because she starting to get snippy with you. Then she tells you her whole life story. On and on and on and you're thinking all I wanted to do was feed this girl and then get her home. She is adorable and funny so you listen while she goes on and on and on. Of course you have to drive her all the way to the other side of Kings Landing. Since you wreaked her car you do have to be gentleman enough to carry all of her stuff rather her junk to her door. So you help her with all of her junk. She has a ton of stuff. You don't even have a clue what it is. Finally you get it all the way into her foyer… put it all down on the floor and she says I'll take care of this in the morning. See you. She doesn't even say thank you for the dinner and the ride home. But that might be excusable because your car ate her car. That dinner was a pity date and she made you pay! Both monetarily and emotionally!

I can go one better or even worse, however you wish to look at it! This is a self pity date. Imagine you meet this gorgeous, gorgeous girl. Of course it's for all the wrong reasons. The two of you were trying to park in the same parking spot at the same time. Your huge Jeep just happened to eat her little tiny Fiat and it's dented beyond recognition. You feel terrible. She gets hungry before you drive her home like the gentleman you are. So you go out to grab some Chinese. You think everything's going OK. You try to apologize, explaining the stress at your job and try not to sound like too much of a pompous asshole. Like I have some fabulous stressful job and I'm just so stressed because I'm so high and mighty and I'm just so up there in the world. She totally knocks you down because she innocently says "oh you might know my father." Shit her father turns out to be the man that you look up most to in this whole world. Shit shit shit you become the most embarrassed and self pitying asswipe in the world. Of course her father is going to find out. All of the hard work and all of the career building that you have done has been destroyed by a simple parking indiscretion. Unfortunately it's not a simple parking indiscretion. Your car crushed hers so you become a totally misery eating wimp. Finally you MUST go and confess to her father. That's a pity date. That's a total pity perfect scenario. She feels pity for you. You feel pity for yourself. It's just an all around totally encompassing pity date.

All right, Sansa. Can you best his pity date? On the pity date scale, what is your worst pity date?

All right. Let me think about this one. OK. My worst pity date is going out with a guy who has left me with no means of transportation. So I have to either rely on my friends or rely on him. I choose to rely on him because my friends are so scatterbrained that they probably would forget me. I know that the guy has got it together or so I think. All right my pity date happens because he's feeling sorry for me because of the car situation. He has to pick me up from school. Now he's trying to give me a complement in the Jeep. Number 1, this vehicle has no roof so it's almost impossible to hear him and he's yelling at the top of his lungs over the motor which is one of those totally jacked up motors on his totally jacked up Jeep which is the reason why you don't have transportation in the first place. Number 2, he complements you with a song that he says reminds him of you. He tries to complement you saying "Oh I want to play Little China Girl for you because it reminds me of you because you're wearing red shoes and you were wearing red shoes last night which is when HE of course destroyed your car! You think to yourself what does red shoes have to do with all this? Of course you're wearing red shoes again but that's almost beside the point because he plays the whole song for you. The two of you know all the words and you sing it over the huge roar of the engine as he's driving 80 miles an hour. You begin to feel sorry for yourself because you might actually end up in a worse crash with him driving you in his Jeep rather than him just driving a car at you. All right! That's bad enough. After you sing the complete song, you say you know….. And you knew this already but you didn't want to say anything because he's really cute and charming and sweet. But then it just gets too funny and you're like… oh the Gods. You tell yourself he's trying so hard. He's trying to impress me with his knowledge of Bowie but he either doesn't know the songs or he's totally lost his mind because he's got the wrong song. So finally you can't take it anymore and you realize you're beginning to feel sorry for him because he's trying as hard as possible to give you a complement. But it's a miserable failure. So you are beginning…. this is the pity part… OK. You really feel pity for him because it's a switchback. He felt pity for you and is picking you up even though he owes you. And now he's trying to make up for it with the complement. But his complement crashes and burns because he's wrong. His reference is totally wrong even though you really like the song. So you finally tell him… "You know there are no red shoes in this song." and you told me that you picked this song out for me because of the red shoes and really you picked out Little China Girl because we ate Chinese last night and the MSG has probably gotten to you. You probably have an MSG headache and you can't remember which Bowie song you mean. Then bossy YOU makes him play Let's Dance which is where the red shoes reference actually is: put on your red shoes and dance the blues. And he has to admit that no….. no this is where he deflects and tries to maintain with a complement. Oh no it's Little China Girl because your skin… blah blah blah you've got skin like porcelain like china. You're not buying that for one. The only thing that saves his ass here is that both songs happened to be on the same album. You proceed to give him a break…. that he's been shuffling songs and they've all blurred together. He has to admit OK maybe it was just the MSG. But you are beautiful. Oh the Gods, that's total pity date. The only thing that keeps it going is that he is so unbelievably handsome and he's trying so hard.

All right, Jon. Can you top that, for your pity date?

I'm going to try. Here is the ultimate pity date. Now try to follow me. Of course you meet this girl because your car your Dragon has eaten her Snowflake she says. And that's just too cute. In fact it's absolutely adorable. And right there an arrow goes straight through your heart. So you've survived dinner with her. You've survived the MSG. You've survived holding back… wanting to kiss her when you take her home because of course you don't know if she might just be ax murderer and you're standing in her hallway. This is after you've just found out that her father is your mentor and she's from the North where you've heard they still settle things with axes and swords. So you have a high degree of trepidation. You drop her stuff on the floor and you run out the door because you don't carry your sword with you on a daily basis. Then of course you have to tell her father everything because he's your mentor and surprisingly enough he does not run you through with his family's great sword that he has hanging in his office. So you survived that. But you DO have to text her and you're totally concise. And she just Siri dictates these long, long texts. You even read them which is scary to you all right because you're usually so work oriented. When you pick her up you make the greatest faux pas ever because she's so gorgeous that you can't get your mind straight and you play a song for her. You play Little China Girl for her because subconsciously there's a reason why you play Little China Girl. But you blurt out that it's because she's wearing red shoes when you know that's a totally different Bowie song. Even though it's on the same album and you know that deep down you're playing Little China Girl for her because of the line I'm a wreck without my Little China Girl. Because from the minute that she crashed into your life…well you crashed into hers…. something tells you would be a wreck without her. And then of course she points out the fact that you have played the wrong song and she demands a reason. So you just say oh yeah it's because you know you've got the most gorgeous porcelain skin yeah! She does NOT buy that for a second because she knows she's beautiful. And she's probably been complemented over and over and over and she's probably heard all kinds of shit from guys because guys are such bullshit talkers. Then she straightens you out and tells you…. "You know the red shoes are in Let's Dance. She kindly remind you and then it's super ultimate pity because she lets you kiss her. You're not sure if she lets you kiss her because she pities you because you're just so dumb or because when you guys were running you accidentally told her that your mom was dead and she comes from a huge family. You're not even sure. That's just such a conundrum. That might be a misery date. I'm not sure but anyway let's go on with this scenario. OK so she lets you kiss her and then dance like wild banshees on the beach. She lets you kiss her some more. Then she has to go home to finish school work… is she even telling the truth or just feeling so bad for you? Finally when you drop her off at home she agrees to go out on another date with you. Realize this isn't your typical date because she agrees to go out with you to your friend store that's having a 70's and 80's dance party. So you know she totally pities you and that's the end of my pity party.

Sansa can you top that?

"Actually I don't think so. I think that Jon has thoroughly summed up all the possible pity date scenarios that could exist starting from the fact that his dragon ate my snowflake. I do want to state, in front of all of you, for the record, Jon..."

Sansa looks right at Jon and continues to speak as she walks toward him. She takes his hand in hers and smiles coyly.

"Jon, not one moment of this has been because of pity on my part and I hope that not one moment of this has been because of pity on your part either."

Jon pulls her into his arms in front of the crowd and kisses her passionately, even intimately.

"No, Sansa, not one moment of this has been because of pity. Maybe a little self loathing on my part. I will confess a bit of fear of your father as well as knowing that I want to do right by you. But, no pity. I've got to tell you Sansa, I would be a wreck without my Little China Girl.