Some people dream of candlelit dinners in Paris; I dreamed of biscuits, catfish, and a front-porch serenade with the boy who played guitar in my Sunday school class. His name was Will, but he insisted everybody, even his mama, call him “Fox.” We met in junior year of high school and bonded over a shared love of Flannery O’Connor, who we were both too young to understand but quoted anyway to sound profound. He was tall, polite, and had hair that fell in his eyes just enough to make him look mischief-adjacent. Basically, I was smitten, and my smitten self hatched what I thought was a foolproof plan to impress him: a homemade Southern picnic under the stars.

This wasn’t just any picnic. This was going to be the picnic. Think “Steel Magnolias” vibes but catered by Pinterest boards I clearly underestimated, starring me as the quirky Southern girl too charming for her own good. It was ambitious, borderline delusional, and destined to end in what we’ll generously call "a learning experience."

Here’s how it spiraled out of control—and what it taught me about authenticity, relationships, and why fried chicken and self-worth don’t always mix.

The Grand Plan (and the Grocery Store Meltdown)

The day before the big picnic, I sauntered into our local Piggly Wiggly with a very detailed list scrawled in purple gel pen:

  • Buttery homemade biscuits (Canned ones? Absolutely not.)
  • Fried catfish (because nothing says romance like frying delicate seafood in Alabama humidity).
  • Peach cobbler (a dessert ambitious for someone who routinely burned frozen waffles).
  • Sweet tea (obviously).

It didn’t take long to realize I was out of my depth. The biscuits alone sent me spinning. Should I try buttermilk or cream biscuits? Did I need a biscuit cutter? What is cream of tartar, and why was it so aggressively expensive? I settled on a mix branded “Grandma’s Secret” and crossed my fingers. Biscuit karma, please don’t fail me now.

The deeper into this grocery adventure I got, the more it unraveled. The fishmonger was out of catfish but offered tilapia, which I bought with the confidence of someone who hadn’t Googled "how to fry tilapia." The peaches weren’t in season, but I figured a can with a cartoon peach on it screamed "authenticity." By the time I made it to the tea aisle, I was fully sweating through my sunhat, my list abandoned, forging an unholy cart of improvisations.

The Date Night Di(saster)

Fox picked me up right on time in his beat-up truck, with a playlist of folk songs that mostly contained banjos but gave him a soulful air. I had us set up under an ancient oak tree outside my aunt’s property—the kind of place that practically begged you to fall in love or at least write a Taylor Swift song about heartbreak. I’d even strung up fairy lights for that extra Southern gothic sparkle.

The trouble began as soon as Fox tried the biscuits. They were less “Grandma’s Secret” and more “Hardtack Rations from the Civil War.” The fish, beautifully breaded before I pan-fried them, had taken on a unique leathery quality after being kept warm in aluminum foil and sitting too long in the Georgia equivalent of swamp air. When I proudly presented the cobbler, the syrupy sweetness nearly took him out. God bless Fox for trying, but the boy coughed like he’d swallowed peach-molasses glue.

He turned to me, smiling softly but obviously in mild distress. “This… definitely tastes like you put a lot of love into it.” Which was both sweet and the gentlest way of saying, “What in the world is this catastrophe?”

Lessons from a Picnic Gone Wrong

At some point during the night, I started laughing so hard tears streamed into the cobbler I was trying to salvage. The food was bad, but the experience wasn’t—and that’s when the real clarity hit me. Here’s what that misadventure taught me.

  1. Connection Doesn’t Need Perfection.
    Looking back, I wasn’t trying to win Fox over with just good food; I wanted to play a character—the effortlessly flawless Southern girl who can balance charm and culinary skills with ease. The truth? Me trying to play dress-up for a date was like a dog walking on hind legs. Cute effort, horrible execution. Real connection comes from showing up as yourself. Perfect biscuits optional.

  2. Beware of Placing Performance Over Presence.
    I was so focused on pulling off this perfect scenario—the food, the lights, the playlist—that I barely enjoyed the actual date. The lesson? Make sure your big romantic gestures don’t overshadow the romance itself. You don’t need a perfect plan when a heartfelt, simple connection will more than do the trick. Keep things meaningful, not manufactured.

  3. Embrace the Ridiculousness.
    Fox ended up being a much better sport than I deserved. By the end of the night, we were eating charred biscuits, dunking them in store-bought peach jam from the picnic basket, and swapping bad date stories. He told me about a girl who made him listen to her poetry about frogs on their first date. I told him this was still less embarrassing than dropping a biscuit onto someone’s lap mid-homecooked-failure.

  4. Grace is Sexy. Perfection Is Exhausting.
    Fox didn’t care that I couldn’t fry a fish, but he did notice my insecurity over trying to impress him. Confidence and grace—like laughing at the absurdity of a bad plan—go a lot further than being flawless, trust me. (He would later tell me the fairy lights were way over the top, too. Point taken.)

From Misadventure to Mindset Shift

I’d love to tell you Fox and I had some epic love story that began with that picnic, but he ended up leaving for college in Tennessee a year later. What stayed, though, was what I learned from the night. It taught me that love, whether it’s new or decades in, isn’t about the fairy lights, the Pinterest-perfect tablescape, or impressing someone with your extremely limited domestic skills. It’s about showing up—flaws, quirks, burned biscuits, and all—and making space for each other to laugh at life’s messes.

So if you’re planning a grand date night this weekend, here’s my advice: Keep it simple. Share a pizza on the tailgate of a truck. Forget the props, the costumes, and the canned cobbler. Just be you. After all, it’s a whole lot harder to mess up that way—and much easier to fall for each other in the process.