This isn't my most embarrassing story about blowing it with a girl, but this is my best.

My senior year of college, I was really into this doe-eyed brunette. She was petite and kinda shy and really cute and had big boobs. I've always been a sucker for those kind of girls. We were at a party at some grad student's (rented) house. This was all upper-classmen, so it wasn't Animal House or anything. Mostly, it was hipsters arguing about which craft beers were the most artisinal.

Somehow, an impromptu extreme pong game broke out in the garage, and she was in the audience. Extreme pong is a game where you swat the ball up onto the pingpong table, let it roll off, and the other player has to let it bounce once before trying to hit it back onto the table. It's not that extreme, but players often have to go sprinting around the table to catch the ball before it bounces twice.

I won 3 matches and played the "final" against one of the brunette's friends who had come to the party with her. She was a tall, skinny blonde who was pretty but I wasn't hand't really noticed because of the aforementioned brunette.

It was brutal. I played a lot of extreme pong in college, and this girl was playing it for the first time. But she was good. We were playing to 10 for some reason, and I started off losing like 4 straight points to her. I rallied back and had her 7-6.

Somehow I whapped the ball into the net and it started a slow roll off one side of the table. She came sprinting around and I got in front of her and blew it off to the other side. (You're allowed to influence the ball's direction by blowing on it). She had to race around the other side of the table. She slipped and clipped the side of her head against a corner. It sounded a lot worse than it actually was, but she came up with an angry red mark on her temple. She lost the point and looked furious.

Some people were trying to stop the game, but she was like, 'No, we're finishing this.' She managed to knock a really good serve off a corner, and I went to 9. But she'd somehow forgotten the count and thought it was game point. She slammed her paddle onto the table and did a full-on Mia Hamm scream. I had to tell her it wasn't over. She scored 10 on the next volley and lost.

Afterward, I was streaming sweat. She looked bad too. I turned to see if I could find her brunette friend. She was staring at me like I was a maniac, and I thought "Ah shit, there it goes. I was way too intense.'

I knew I'd been way too intense. But fair was fair, I walked up to the blonde and shook her hand. She just kind of smiled and said 'My head really hurts.'

I got her number and we started going out a week later. She had a nasty yellow bruise on the side of her forehead.

We're still together. We don't do many sporty things anymore.