Rims, Spoilers, Mini Windshield Wipers, Subwoofers, and Other Necessities

In a world where people strap explosives to their shoes, dogs fight in abandoned buildings, and silver fillings are still legal, there should be nothing intimidating about a first date. Unfortunately, few things seem less nerve-racking than meeting someone new. This seems doubly true when my current policy is “if he asks, you will date him!” Since I have had bad luck deciding which fellows are best suited for me, this seemed like a logical way to broaden my horizons. My horizon, at present, might as well be a screen capture of Plants Vs. Zombies…because some of these experiences have gotten a tad ugly.

In my desire to broaden my dating pool, I’ve ignored a bit of advice from someone whom, theoretically, knows a lot about love. I’ll admit to watching the “Millionaire Matchmaker” a time or two…maybe I’ve seen every episode, maybe I haven’t. Believe whatever you’d like. Usually, the sincere people are easy to spot, there are a couple of yahoos thrown on to boost ratings, and the whole thing seems like a bucket of common sense. The show is a little too technical for my liking, and I’d like to punch out Patti (THEE Millionaire Matchmaker) when she yells at people with a BMI of 25.5 for being too fat, tells women their natural hair color isn’t flattering, and attacks people for not wanting to answer rather personal questions about their sex lives. However, the nutty woman makes some very valid points.

One of the things she insists is essential is qualifying the buyer. It’s a technical process, and seems much like purchasing a car. If you’ve always wanted a car with spinners, a station wagon is obviously not going to be satisfactory. She has some criteria that sound common sense, but are all-too-difficult in the real world. In a very basic sense, she tries to set people up with the same sets of priorities, morals, and standards. Who knew these lists of qualifications could be so lengthy? After going on date number 492 (or, perhaps, four) with someone who was completely wrong for me, this is what I came up with:

· Age 33 or under

· Preferably non-religious

· Nonsmoker

· Lives within a reasonable distance

· Wants children

· Has a sense of humor and a decent IQ

This list seemed simple enough. I had qualified my buyer. I logged into the dating website I was using, and tightened up my qualifications. I was no longer going to accept just anyone, I was going to be semi-discerning! Then, as I changed my settings to be more discretionary, crazy thoughts started running through my head, and I came up with the most ridiculous list of “qualifications” on the planet. This is why I should never listen to anyone who uses television to brand herself and sell bouquets of flowers, paid dating website subscriptions, books, DVDs, and weight loss products. Despite my doubts of Patti, I came up with a second list. The second qualification list was straight from Hades – the thoughts of an insane woman who remains single for rather obvious reasons:

· Must not be a Buddhist, unless the man is originally from Tibet. While the Buddhists are an amazing, peace loving and wonderful people, I have found those who claim to have converted to Buddhism to be a little off. These people typically seem to be missing something in life and are crazily searching for what makes them happy – which, more often than not, seems to be loads and loads of cannibas – and has little to do with the Dharma Wheel and Four Noble Truths.

· While not claiming to be a Buddhist, must understand that I really, really like yoga. Perhaps, this fella would willingly go to a yoga class…every once in a great, great while. Just as a show of interest, ya know?

· Has manners and is nice to my mom

· Bonus points for having an extended quirky, entertaining nuclear family, just like the Braverman's in Parenthood. Extra bonus points if the family likes to get dressed up for Christmas. Double Extra Bonus if Grandma knits sweaters.

· Should not be afraid of flying, public bathrooms, or grocery cart handles. There is plenty of soap in the world.

· Thinks pitbulls are misunderstood

· Lives between Eight Mile and Maple, in the general Woodward Avenue vicinity…since this is where I enjoy living, and won’t want to change neighborhoods when we’re happily riding off into the sunset

· Is generally clean, but understands that I frequently forget to make the bed…and usually throw the mail on the table and don’t open it. I have some good qualities to balance these out…I think…

· Recycles

· Can handle his booze

· Gets along well with the gays, because certain fellas have been in my life for a long, long time

· Reads for shits and giggles

· Has a job that I can wrap my head around. Plumbers and cops are fine, strategic internet marketing sales and installments with an emphasis in digital restoration, and you work from home, too? Hmmm…sounds rather close to “unemployed.”

· Looks like, had he been born at the right time, in the right place, he might have once been a lumberjack.

· Does not own loads and loads of hair products or other grooming tools, but brushes his teeth a few times a day.

· Can fill in a blank map of the United States

· Doesn’t think donating to public radio or television is a waste

· Gives sincere compliments

· Is complementary

· Knows the difference between compliment and complement

Do I ever expect to find someone who matches all of my criteria? Well, no. Do I want someone close? Absolutely. I think that too often people compromise, and settle into a comfortable relationship with someone that doesn’t quite measure up to their list, if they even know what their list entails. I know what’s on my list. It’s finding someone with his own list, a complementary list, that is the challenge.

Conversation for Dummies

For years, my conversational skills stunk. I tried to be more outgoing, but unless someone fit into my target knitch* group, I had a difficult time communicating. I still have a tendency to clam up or prattle on. When it comes to chattin’ up the men folk, I’ve been as articulate as a mime for as long as I can remember. This is something I have put painstaking efforts into improving.

In my early twenties, I remember Googling advice on the subject. I was an awful conversationalist. Talking about myself was all I was capable of. I never knew how to lead a conversation, or ask questions without sounding like I was rattling off a qualification questionnaire. After ridiculous amounts of practice, and throwing myself to the wolves on multiple occasions, eventually I felt somewhat confident.

Then, as a confidant gabber, I met Dave. If I had been a conversationalist in training, then Dave…well…Dave was a conversationalist in need of electroshock therapy. Fearing my worst habits would come back, within moments of meeting him, I went into overachiever mode. This is a small scale song-and-dance routine I pull out every once in a great while. I kick overachiever mode ass. I go “on” and I don’t stop until the fat lady sings…which usually means I’ve cranked up the radio and am on the way home, decompressing from overachiever mode. Unfortunately, overachiever mode is exhausting. Over achiever socializing kills me, and is only for desperate situations. It’s an act.

Dave was late for our little date. He asked me out, but asked to meet on a Sunday afternoon, and left the location open – but not the time. Dave needed until at least two p.m., as he apparently likes to sleep in. Lunch was obviously behind us and dinner too far ahead. I would never, ever, EVER admit that at two p.m., on a Sunday, I can occasionally be found perched atop a bar stool, sulking about the imminence of Monday...so drinks were obviously out, too. Coffee, it was.

I met Dave at a Starbucks. With the prevalence of Starbucks franchises, this felt slightly more personal than McDonald’s, but Dave certainly wasn’t scoring points for creativity or originality. Our date was also slipping in the quality department, because he was rather late. Eleven minutes late, but who’s counting? As I self-consciously sat and sipped, I thought about Starbucks and strip malls. We lived at separate ends of a county, Dave and I. Already, I resented driving to strip-mall heaven, the general “in between our places” area to meet up for our first date. I also grew increasingly itchy about the “late” factor.

Dave eventually arrived. I was starting to feel bad about my “late” irritation and was letting it go – I’m a stickler for punctuality. Eleven minutes isn’t all that late. However, I noticed he did not look for me when he walked in. He didn’t really look at anything, actually. In his elastic-waist leather jacket, he marched to the counter and ordered a small hot chocolate. Then he stood and stared at his twiddling thumbs while it was prepared. Not. Looking. Anywhere.

At this point I started feeling bad for Dave. I recognized all these darling awkward moments as moments from my past, before I enrolled in self-guided social boot camp and decided it was sink or swim time. This period started a few years after I began working for a new company…and realized no one talked to me. I didn’t talk to them, so this wasn’t their fault. Sure, most of them were older than I was. Sure, we had little in common. Still, I needed to start at least acknowledging the presence of others, because instead of coming off as someone a little shy, I was coming off as an uptight bitch. Kind of like Dave, who one part of me wanted to call “ASSHHOLE!” and the other part of me wanted to hug.

That was the only point in our date where I thought about hugging Dave. He finally plopped down in a chair across from me and said “hi,” at 2:15 p.m. I tried to talk to him. I tried to like him. I tried to figure out who he was. While we (meaning I) talked, I questioned my literary skills. Dave, if memory and internet profile served me correctly, was a year younger than I was. He looked like a man in his early forties. He had a college degree, but he looked like a beaten down factory worker. Something about his face screamed “I eat LOTS of meat and my mom makes vegetables out of a can, smothered in Velveeta!” Yes, he lived with his parents. It wasn’t a temporary or transitional situation, either. Why was I out with this person? He asked, that was why. I said I would give anyone who asked me out a chance. I was doing this because every person I had chosen to date, in the past, had been a disappointment. I needed to loosen up.

Embracing anything I could about Dave – because after all, I was supposed to be giving people a chance – I asked him about traveling. The only person he had mentioned (other than his parents) was his best friend, who lived in Oregon with his wife. Having taken a bus through Portland once, I had found it to be a beautiful, green city. That trip was also in the late nineties, so it was a city filled with Doc Martens, hats with big flowers, coffee, and singer-songwriter types. All of these are things I am rather fond of. Perhaps he had been to Portland!

“No, it’s really expensive.”

YOU LIVE WITH YOUR PARENTS! If I worked full time, and lived with my parents, I would be visiting my best pal in Portland multiple times a year. I would even purchase souvenirs for my parents. As it turns out, Dave was saving up funds to buy a house. Since I happen to love talking real estate, I decided to pick Dave’s brain. Unfortunately, he and I did not agree on what constituted an exciting place to live. While I preferred old neighborhoods with a little character and classic charm, Dave loved everything about new construction and the outer ring suburbs. After all, everyone he knew lived there, and by everyone, I think we may have been talking about his two closest pals - mom and dad.

Since he seemed rather attached to his parents, I tried swinging the conversation to family related topics. Then we/I chatted about pets. He didn’t know if he really liked pets. He’s never been allowed to have one. Oh my. I chattered on for a bit and Dave, sweating like he’d run a marathon, chugged his hot chocolate in massive gulps. Perhaps the heat was killing him, a combination of nerves and cocoa under his outerwear. Dave cracked and started talking, but started talking about…all the other women he’d met on his dating website! He admitted he had been on the site for a few years, and had never really dated anyone he’d met. He did like meeting people.

I asked him about other places he liked to go. He had never heard of the restaurants I mentioned, he wasn’t a drinker so he hated bars, and when I mentioned movies he came up with…

“I don’t go to the movies, they’re kind of expensive.”

That was it for me. Life isn’t free, but it’s worth it. I cannot believe that this cheap, socially inept man was bothering to spend a decent amount of cash on a dating website. I had acknowledged that my social skills were terrible, and I had worked on fixing them. He had, admittedly, been working on finding a lady friend for years, and was obviously not changing anything about his life to make room for that sort of commitment. I was done. As Dave sucked on his disposable coffee mug until the sides caved in, I politely shook his hand. He smiled (for the third time in thirty minutes), and I left. After working my conversational skills to the max, I settled out of overachiever mode and drove home – completely exhausted. I may have picked up a six pack along the way.

The six pack was from a microbrewery.

It was expensive, and I shared it with a friend.

I’m a lucky gal.

*Whilst looking up the proper spelling of “knitch,” because Microsoft Word does not accept the proper spelling, I looked at the synonyms. “Knitch” can be defined by the word fagot, that’s right people, fagot, with one “g.” Do YOU know what a fagot is? Well, I think I once explored the world of “fagots” in a high school Earth Science class…and not in some ridiculous, “I kissed a girl” high school lesbian scenario. I THINK we talked about fagots during some discussion pertaining to rocks. Having gone to a really, really fancy high school, Earth Science was taught by a substitute teacher who had a degree in art. We did a lot of artsy renderings…perhaps, even, of fagots, which have nothing to do with rocks, as far as I can tell. Anywho, to make myself clear, a fagot is a bunch of stuff bundled together, with intention of using this bundle for fuel. That, my friends, is the definition of a fagot.