Preventing Bad Dates Before They Happen

I was on the fence about this guy. I liked his profile and emailed him a few months ago, then promptly forgot about it. So when he emailed me back last week with a bunch of apologies and calling himself a slacker for taking so long to get back to me, I had two thoughts: 1.) Just fess up and say you were dating someone. We’re on a dating website; this would not be a shock to me, and 2.) Wait, who are you?

I enlisted Shroom’s services and the two of us started picking apart his profile, trying to find something that would push me off the fence into one yard or another. Was the picture of him in a pirate hat enough? The joke at his own expense? Wait…hold the phones. He has a link to his blog.

Jackpot.

Forget profiles where you try to present yourself in the best light. Bring on your blog. I want to read what stupid shit you think is important enough to say to the world.

Just a few entries down I humpty-dumptied right off the fence. He shared a story about how as he and his date were leaving a restaurant and a woman stopped him to say she thought his language had been inappropriate for her kids, who had been seated near him. His response? “Get the fuck out of my face, lady.”

Now, had this been an entry been a journey about the life lesson of compassion, learning to disagree agreeably, or simply saying the first thing that comes to your mind is ultimately not the better path, I would have given him a pass. I certainly have no taste for censorship, and there have been quite a few people in my life I would have loved to tell to get the fuck out of my face. But this was not the point of the post. The point was to tell everyone how awesome he was. I am not inferring. The title of the post was something like, “This is another reason why I’m so awesome.”

“Uh…no,” Shroom said with a smirk. And with that I was saved from a bad date, and a possible obligatory dress-down of said date in the parking lot afterward, depending on who overheard our conversation.

So the moral of this story? Don’t blog about embarrassing things that happen on your dates.

Wait a second…