It was a noodle that did it. I broke up with a girl over a noodle.

📷

Let me explain.

During my last year of college me and my friend started dating. She’d always been wild and carefree, with a touch of social awkwardness I found adorable. If she saw a place she wanted to go, she would grab your hand and run heedlessly through the crowd, then insist you dance with her when you got there. She would cancel all her plans, including going to her job, because she got an idea for a song and would spend hours playing guitar and singing in her room. Once she demanded we go on a hike immediately because she realized she’d never had sex against a tree. She was basically a manic pixie dream girl in real life, and dating her was a blast.

Wait, let me rephrase: it was a blast for about two months, then it went downhill real quick. The problem? Sometimes you don’t want to run through a crowd and dance in line for a latte. Sometimes the plans canceled were ones I’d set up for us, and then I’d get a random call insisting I listen to the poetry she’d written instead. Sometimes dropping everything to go off an on impulsive flight of fancy is annoying as hell, especially when it wasn’t going on a sexy hike, but instead thoroughly examining a freckle she was suddenly convinced was cancer. Also, remember that bit about her being socially awkward? That will be important.

So, between all the flights of fancy and impulsive insistence that everyone else do what she wanted (right now you guys! Let’s go!!!!), hanging out with my friends when girlfriend was around became… difficult. Not all was lost though, because every Saturday I would meet up with the group at a dive karaoke bar. It was rad.

Then one Saturday as I’m about to leave there’s a knock on my door. Surprise! Girlfriend missed me and decided spur of the moment to come over and hang out! After taking a bus for two hours! Without calling! And karaoke sounds great! But first, NOODLES!!!! She just had to have noodles. Specific noodles. From the other side of town. And it was annoying as hell, but she was cute, so we got noodles…

And we showed up super late for karaoke. That means, right off the bat, we have to wait forever to sing. Also, all she wants to sing are duets of songs I don’t know. And then she got drunk. Really drunk. Shouting “Oh my god I love you all!” and falling on my friends drunk. “Wait, that one word you just said reminded me of a 20 minute unrelated story!” drunk. “Isn’t this hilarious guys?!” drunk. It wasn’t hilarious. No one thought it was hilarious.

By the time we walked out (way earlier than usual), all of my friends were avoiding her like the plague. I was done. The social awkwardness wasn’t funny anymore, and I was ready to call things off. But once we were at home and going to sleep I felt bad. Maybe she didn’t mean to get drunk. Maybe she was just nervous around all my other friends. Was I just being too critical? I should give her another chance. We could work this out.

Then at 3:00 AM:

“Jason! Jason! Wake up!”

“What?! What’s going on?!”

“I threw up! Like, a lot!”

“Oh no! Are you ok?”

“Yeah yeah, I’m fine. You’ll never believe it though. A noodle came out my nose!”

“… what?”

“A noodle! A giant noodle! It just shot out of my nose when I was throwing up! It was hilarious!”

“A… noodle?”

“Yeah! One of those fat ones we ate earlier. I didn’t flush the toilet yet, want to come see?!”

“No… No, I don’t want to come see.”

I went back to sleep and broke up with her the next day.