Some years ago, a columnist in the New York Post wrote a wonderful story about dating. As near as I can recall, here is how it went.

The columnist had been fixed up with a blind date and they were at a restaurant and she was looking for a way out because she didn’t like him at all. She had two cell phones. Dialing one cell phone under the table, she called herself on the other one. When it rang, she answered and had an imaginary conversation with her room mate about her cat. Fluffy was sick, she had to come home right away.

Her dinner date said, all sympathy, “How terrible, I’ll come with you. “ And she answered, “No, Fluffy specifically said, ‘Don’t bring Ira.’”

I like how weird this story is. A lot.

Meanwhile, I can remember one blind date. I am sitting in a restaurant with the two friends who had arranged it. We are waiting for the guy. A fellow appears in the doorway. Please, God, I say to myself, let it not be him. It was him. Think an ugly Jack Palance. (I know, how is that possible.)He apparently felt the same way about me. The evening ended at the curb when I got into one cab and he got into another one. During dinner, trying to make the best of things, I had tried to draw him out. He wasn’t having any. Apparently he had a crush on someone in his office a lot younger and I, by then widowed, didn’t measure up to Ms. WEAP (wide-eyed and pubescent).

Fast forward to the bereavement group. I am at the registration window in the Social Services Center sponsoring the group, paying my fee to be in it. A fellow seated nearby in the waiting room, leans forward to get a better look at me. “Womanizer,” I said to myself. That was Edward. We were married two years later.

Incidentally, my first impression was accurate. It took me a while to straighten him out.

Later, he tells me he wasn’t impressed because I looked like a hippie (pants and pullover – gimme a break)
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But happiness comes out of strange places, doncha think?

Xx, Teal