He was cute. Very cute. He made me laugh. He tipped well. He loved movies and music, and admitted to liking the cheesy stuff we all deny. He had great teeth. We talked about everything -- family, travel, careers, college, even bad past dates and, ironically enough, the deal breakers. I was smitten. Then, while he was laughing at one of my more amusing stories, those great teeth of his moved. I was startled and perplexed; I wondered, "Did that really just happen?" No, I assured myself as I took a bite of my crème brûlée. But then it happened again, though more pronounced this time; they slid down just far enough to reveal his empty gums. I stared. He noticed. He explained that he had played hockey in college and had sustained a particularly nasty shot to the mouth, requiring him to get dentures. I feigned sympathy and averted my gaze. The check came. He paid. I tried to envision kissing him. I couldn't. He called. I didn't call back. I'm terrible, I know
-- Anonymous

In the early 1970s I was engaged to a man who had just graduated from a military college, which was fairly brave of me considering the anti-military climate in the U.S. at that time. He was sent to Fort Sill, Okla., for his first tour of duty, and a few months later I went to visit him for two weeks. This trip took place over my mother's dead body; she felt I was shaming my family in our East Coast community by staying with a man to whom I was not yet married. ("No one will know unless you tell him," I said in smart-alecky response.) At first, the reunion was wonderful. He pampered me and took me dancing at the officer's club. But then it happened. One evening he left his shoes under the coffee table in the living room. The next day when he returned home from work, he was barely in the door when he said to me -- pointing in the direction of the shoes -- "What are those?"
"Your shoes," I said.
And then he delivered unto me the fatal deal breaker: "I expect my things to be picked up and put away by the time I get home," he said.
Soon after, I broke the engagement. And for years thereafter I reminded my mother that had I not gone to Oklahoma to visit my beloved second lieutenant, I would have ended up married to him. And divorced from him.
-- Kathryn Wise