A disastrous first date

Dating can be stressful at the best of times, but even worse if you are a you're teen bumbling in the dark and full of nerves and insecurity. I was bantering the other day with a Facebook friend who was the subject of my first actual date, and it brought it all back. I think I was maybe fifteen or so, and even nerdier than I am today (which is saying something), and finally drummed up courage to ask our the girl I'd been crushing on for months.
To my amazement she said yes, and we agreed to go to the movies in her home town. Unfortunately this was a bit of a logistical problem as I lived some distance away (well it was only about 15 miles, but in thoose days and that age, it might as well have been on Mars), and getting there would mean persuading my parents to drive me there (and I was too embarassed to tell them the real reason, and so made up an extremely, overly complex excuse for why I needed to visit). I also didn't know the town, so I asked first-date-girl (FDG) to meet me outside of local landmark store I knew.
To cut a long story short, I waited there for 6 hours. I thought I'd been stood up, and had hours and hours to dwell on it until my parents came to pick me up. FDG, however, was waiting outside the movie theater and thought I'd stood her up (and this was the days before mobiles, or at least mobiles that were not the size and weight of a cinder block and cost as much as a small car). When we met each other again, we found out what had gone wrong, but I was so traumatized, and had used up my reserves of geeky teen boy courage as far as girls were concerned, that I didn't ask her for a do-over. Admittedly this was not as traumatic as the end of my relationship with my first real college girlfriend (if you know me personally I'm happy to tell the story, but it was a pretty sickening end for a first love - let's just say initially it ended fine, but her subsequent boyfriend was a nasty and twisted individual, and was when she tried to get back with me - which didn't happen BTW - he went all out in revenge), but it was stressful enough for a fifteen year old.
Anyway me and FDG are chums now, and one day when I'm in her part of the world I'll ask her to the movies and hopefully we will actually get to see a film together at last.
But even now, in my later years, organizing a place to meet up, and more 'formal' dates where you have to meet somewhere, still fill me with disproportionate dread. So if I've ever dated you, or tried to date you, I sincerely apologize if I had first date jitters and I hope I wasn't too much of a nervous idiot.