The Icecream Eater

There comes a time during every date where you wonder whether it is the right thing to tell your date he has food on his mouth, or to let him figure it out by 1) hoping that when he wipes his mouth he will finally wipe away that line of food along the outer corners of his mouth, 2) wait until he walk to the bathroom to clean himself and realise he has food on his face. Most likely he will return back to the table looking like he never had food on his mouth, or 3) desperately hope that a good samaritan will silently signal to your date that they have food stuck to their face (this good samaritan could be a passer-by, the waiter, or the mirror behind my chair). I’d like to mention that Option 3 has never happened to me, but I still hold out hope for this…one day, this will happen and I will regain my faith in the hospitality business in America.

I found myself in this unfortunate situation on a first date. He was eating chocolate icecream and the first bite he took from his icecream scoop landed on his upper lip. I didn’t want to say anything because we had only first met 10 minutes ago. I didn’t want to seem like a control freak, pointing out this guy’s inability to cleanly eat icecream, when I don’t even know him that well. I thought that there would be plenty of mouth wiping action later, so I thought I’d let the notice slide, as it might also embarrass him and he might feel weird eating the rest of his icecream in front of me. Alas, he did not realise his chocolate moustache and he had already thoroughly (as he thought) wiped his mouth several times.

I didn’t know what to do, to tell him about his chocolate moustache or to let it slide. The chocolate moustache was not that bad – you couldn’t see it from afar and up close, you might think it was an extension of his upper lip, which was unfortunately quite close to his nose. During this confliction, I desperately wanted him to wipe his mouth, and I thought I had made a good example of thorough mouth-wiping with my napkin, but he didn’t follow and after too much time had passed, I couldn’t say anything because it would reflect that I had been introduced to his chocolate moustache for some time, without telling him. My date ended and we went our separate ways. I know I was a coward for not telling him, but proper etiquette on this would be appreciated for novice daters.