She took her date to a hockey game. He went to the restroom and never came back

Dates can unexpectedly be filled with awkward situations . Photo / 123RF

There are so many ways that people are terrible to one another while dating. There's ghosting, when someone you've been seeing disappears without a word of explanation, making you wonder: Are they dead, or just dead to me? There's cloaking, where they'll make plans, and then unmatch and disappear, leaving you no way of getting in touch and making you wonder whether you should still show up for the date.

Holly J., a 28-year-old woman in Silicon Valley, recently became acquainted with another kind of disappearing act: When someone gets up, mid-date, and doesn't return. It's a move we've decided to call the Baby Shark, for the immaturity displayed in just slinking away, naively thinking your disappearance won't make waves. Plus it happened at a San Jose Sharks hockey game.

Holly, who spoke on the condition that only her first name and last initial be used for dating safety reasons, met her date on Hinge, one of the first dating apps, which bills itself as a place for relationship-minded singles. They exchanged messages for about two weeks, she said, discussing the fact that he was new to the area and their shared love of hockey. When he suggested that they get together for drinks, Holly responded that she doesn't drink - and asked whether he'd like to go to a Sharks game instead.

Holly found good tickets for $100 apiece; she and her date agreed to each pay for their own ticket. "Normally I wouldn't be willing to spend that much for a first date," she told me, "but even if we didn't like each other, it'd still be a good game."

Holly's date lived near the hockey stadium, so she swung by his place to pick him up. He brought her a coconut water, which she thought was a sweet gesture. On the 15-minute car ride to the stadium, however, Holly sensed something was up: Her date asked her, three times, whether her parents still lived in Michigan. She had a hunch that maybe he'd smoked pot to calm his nerves before the date. (It's legal in California.)

As they walked into the stadium, they grabbed some popcorn to share and found their seats. The team was doing warm-ups, and Holly and her date continued their get-to-know-you conversation. "It all seemed very normal," Holly said, adding that her date still seemed like he might've been high. "I didn't want to ask him on the off chance that he wasn't. I wanted to stay polite," she said, noting that she's not opposed to pot.

At the end of the first period of play, Holly's date gave her a wad of cash to repay her for his ticket, excused himself to use the restroom - and never returned. A while later, once the second period had started, he texted that he had decided to head home. That was it. Their first date was over, and he didn't even say goodbye, or apologise for leaving her stranded.

"I just kind of sat there for a minute and thought: Did this actually just happen?" Holly told me. A few minutes later, Holly left, too. "I was kind of bummed and I didn't feel like being there anymore," she said, adding that she didn't respond to his text. "I was mad about it in the moment, but I didn't want to do or say anything that I would potentially regret later."

The next day, she shared the story on Twitter, where she got a lot of sympathy, and one person Venmo'd her $5 so she could take herself out for coffee.

"I thought that we were having a nice time, and I didn't really get any explanation for why he left," Holly said. "If he wasn't feeling well - or wasn't having a good time - he could have said that. I wish he would have just told me."

Something somewhat similar once happened with characters on The Office: Roy brought along his brother on his first date with Pam. The trio went to a minor league hockey game; the brothers forgot she was with them and left the game while she was in the bathroom. Somehow she went on to get engaged to the guy! (Although, yes, she broke it off and later married Jim.)

Holly, mature shark that she is, said she couldn't see herself leaving a date in progress unless she felt she was in danger. "If I'm on a date, I try to be really engaged and form a connection with them," she said. "Everybody has nerves on first dates, but I think being vulnerable with somebody is always the right choice, especially in a world that makes it easy to be closed off."

Rather than shelling out for $100 tickets and committing to a full hockey game, Holly's decided to keep future first dates more low-key - with the hope of finding better luck out there in the frigid waters of online dating.