Dale Hazel is a music lover. He loves how songs tell important stories in a few melodic minutes. Dale believes that every song is a chapter in someone's life story. Dale wants every song to be a part of his life story. That's why every day, Dale attempts to live out one of his favorite songs, for better or for worse...
Dale's feet are tired and layered with blisters. His muscle mass is all but deteriorated, with the exception of his newly-toned calves. It could be from all the time he spent on his feet over the last few weeks. More specifically, it might be the collateral damage of walking 500 miles from Rockford, Illinois to Lincoln, Nebraska, and then another 500 miles to Oklahoma City. This was all in an effort to be the man who walked a thousand miles to fall down at Marcy Hoover's door.
One late night, Dale came across Marcy's online dating profile and was instantly entranced by her gentle features and winning smile. After briefly perusing her personal interests, Dale discovered that he and Marcy shared a passion for mango-flavored drinks and 90's pop music.
Following his heart in a blind race towards true love, Dale put on a pair of tennis shoes and MapQuested the walking directions to Marcy's home in Oklahoma City. Showing up uninvited and unknown into Marcy's life was a risk, but Dale felt that their matching astrological signs--along with their shared fondness for Tom Hanks movies--had joined their souls in a cosmic, and irreversible, way.
The trek to reach Marcy lasted nearly three weeks, during which Dale fought off wild animals, slept in abandoned buildings, and broke two of his toes. He also dropped 34 pounds and became dangerously dehydrated, as he took no provisions and had to subsist off scraps of food people threw out of their car windows. But upon waking from his heat-induced mini-coma in a bed at Saint Anthony's Hospital, Dale expressed his joy and sense of accomplishment at seeing Marcy's fantastic smile in person.
Staring into Marcy's eyes, he said, "When I woke up, well I knew I was gonna be, I was gonna be the man who woke up next to you."
In actuality, the look on Marcy's face would later be self-described as that of "pure confusion and a little bit of terror." Marcy had taken Dale's "romantic" gesture as a creepy and reckless act of self-endangerment. Had Dale spent more than a few seconds glancing at her dating profile, he would have seen her personality type listed as "cautious and definitely not impulsive."
Although she took Dale to the hospital and stayed with him until doctors confirmed his stable health, Marcy has since issued a restraining order against him; coincidentally, Dale is no longer allowed within a thousand miles of Marcy.
"It's dangerous to encourage that type of behavior," said Marcy. "I think I'll be deleting The Proclaimers from my iPod."
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