Sticks

Ahhhh, Christmas. A magical time of feasting, merriment, and gift-giving! That is, unless you are from my parents' household, in which case, everyone gets one gift and a stocking. Last year, my mom gave my nephew this as his gift:

That's right. A shoebox full of sticks. My mother isn't senile or anything. She tries to get people things they'll like, and in her grandson's case, he was teething and all he wanted to do was chew sticks. Ergo: box full of sticks. (My sister-in-law loved this gift, btw)

Some people are just natural gift-givers and they always know the perfect thing. In my family, we are not like that. We've just never been big on the presents. I'm sure part of that was because my folks spent all their money putting 4 kids through 12 years each of prep schools and there wasn't a lot left for gifts. But the other part is because we don't like the commercialism of Christmas... we'd rather buy someone a gift in July if it strikes us as being something they'll like. Normal people would then put the gift in the closet and wait for December to roll around, but not us.

You see, we are also TERRIBLE secret keepers.

Elle, the day after Thanksgiving: I GOT YOUR CHRISTMAS PRESENT! YOU'RE GOING TO LOVE IT; I'M SO EXCITED!

Lucy: AHHHGH! What is it!?!?

Elle: I can't tell you!!

Lucy: You're my sister! You have to tell me!!!

Elle: Okay!! I had a necklace custom-made for you! It's a silver pendant that says, "Every day, I write my life" and it has a typewriter charm attached to it!

Lucy: OMG, I LOVE IT!!!!

Elle: I can't believe you made me tell you that. You're the worst sister in the world. I hate you.

That is pretty much how every holiday involving gifts goes. And yet, for some reason, we continue to bow to the cultural pressure to buy gifts for each other. And when we do somehow manage to keep the gifts a secret, it's only because they are terrible gifts.

Behold, the solitary gift from my parents this year:

That's right, feast your eyes on this sexy lingerie featuring positions to sleep in with your cat. I almost cried when I opened this. (And not from joy) What makes this gift truly horrifying is the fact that my mom did not give it to me with any sense of irony. My sister had to actually explain why giving a single woman in her 30's a nightshirt full of cats was indelicate. All I could think about was how my co-worker, Hot Andrew, was going to react when I told him about this. Hot Andrew and I met on a dating app many years ago and by sheer dumb luck got hired at the same school, thereby ensuring our eventual friendship. He sees me this way:

...despite the fact that I have only one cat. Andrew always makes fun of how much I love my cat. Every time he asks about Mocha, he says, "It always starts with one, E. Before you know it, you'll have dozens."

It sort of begs the question, if Andrew -- now married and firmly entrenched in the friend zone -- and my parents all see me as Crazy Cat Lady... is that who I'm becoming?? It makes me wonder what the characteristics of a CCL are. This is what I came up with:

* frazzled hair
* frumpy clothes covered in fur
* stays at home with cat instead of going out on dates
* uptight
* feeds cat out of china dishes
* neurotic
* old maid

Now to attack the list point by point.

* Frazzled hair -- Well, sometimes... But I blame that mostly on the fact that I persuaded Jessica to give me a perm this summer. It did not go as planned. Cat lady.
* Frumpy clothes covered in fur -- no. I make a valiant attempt to be fur-free. Not cat lady.
* Stays home with cat instead of going out on dates -- While I do technically still go on dates, I would rather stay at home with my cat. I go on dates because Stratski makes me. But also because it's hard to kill hope.  Not cat lady.
* Uptight -- Ummmmm, yes. I have often been urged to "let my hair down" and drink lots of wine. Cat lady.
* Feeds cat out of china dishes -- Yes. But only because I had these readily available and it seemed wasteful to buy new dishes. Cat lady.
* Neurotic - I mean, do I leave events early to rush home and feed my cat? Yes. But that's because they are boring events. (Damn.) Cat lady.
* Old maid -- Am I an Old Maid? Hmmmm. Stratski recently urged me to put myself "out there" more and show men that I'm interested. I tried this, and do you know what  I was told? "Sorry. I haven't had good luck with older women."

OLDER WOMEN!?!?!?!?!

I'm going to go put on my cat nightgown.

Canoodle.

Sometimes it's very hard having a blog because you want to post funny shit that makes people laugh, but then when it really comes down to it, your life doesn't follow the rules and things happen that are discouraging instead of funny.

I used to think I was lucky.

I've found like a million 4-leaf clovers in my life. My friend Stella used to always make fun of me because anytime we had a fire drill at school and had to take all the kids outside, I could be found staring judiciously at the ground hunting for some good luck.

That's how she got her job in Clayton... She had an interview scheduled, but you basically have to be a Nobel Prize winner to work there. So I combed the area outside her prospective school for 4-leaf clovers (found 2) and then combed our school grounds for them right before her interview (found 1). And there you go. Now she's happy as an (overworked) clam in Clayton.

So you'd think that I could manufacture some stardust for myself, and I really did used to think that I could. I mean, consider: my freshman year at Wheaton, a friend knew I didn't have the money to pay my tuition so her dad offered to cover my 2nd semester. That's a lot of money. Then, my senior year of college, I met this great guy at a Fazoli's and he was like, "Hey, my wife and I have heard a lot about you. We'd like to help you pay off your college loans." They didn't even ask how much money I owed. Just paid it off.

Quite a lot of things in my life seem to have gone that way. But not relationally. No, siree.

In my 20's, people used to be like, "Oh, the pastor you were going to marry decided he didn't love you anymore? That's okay! You're still young, you have plenty of time!"

Now they don't say that. They're like, "Oh, the pastor you thought you were going to marry decided marriage wasn't really for him? That's okay! You look really young for your age, things could still turn around!" (Note: stop dating pastors.) (Double Note: investigate Botox.) (Triple Note: find new friends.)

But it's like, a lot of the people I meet are either socially awkward and I just want to take them under my wing (but not kiss them), or they're really derogatory about their parents/exes/etc. and make me wonder how they'd talk about ME if things didn't work out, or they're 28 and the parents of my students. Or they ARE my students, and that's worse. (Note: teach grad school, not middle school)

And that brings us to this:

...which is pretty much how I've come to view online dating. I think maybe I just completely lucked out with Nick. You already know that I recently got catfished. But then, I don't know, I thought things were starting to turn around.

Gigi and I met people at the same time. They seemed really great. That's where the similarities ended. Because you see, for the last 3 days, I've had to listen through my very thin ceiling as Gigi and Derick laugh and talk and canoodle, and I have to watch them walk around holding hands and being all perfect together. And do you know what they have to watch? Me getting played.

Just kidding. They'd have to actually interact with me to watch that, and they're too busy staring deeply into each other's eyes. So I have to get played with only my insane hairstylist J giving me crap advice that is tantamount to stalking.

Let me tell ya a little something. If someone has an entire house with only like 3 sticks of furniture in it and every other week he goes radio-silent, like nary a text message to even tell you he is alive or thinking of you, that is a great indicator that he is actually married or has a girlfriend and that that home is his bachelor residence where he goes to see, as my students like to say, his side-chick. It seems to be getting more and more common to just outright lie about who you are online.

          
A friend of mine experienced this phenomenon. She met this great guy on OK Cupid. They dated for several months. Then, one day, she went over to his apartment and he'd fallen asleep on his couch, not expecting her to arrive quite so early. To her shock and horror, he was wearing a wedding ring. It turned out that that apartment was where he brought girlfriends, while his full-size house was where he lived with his wife.

My friend was horrified, but the guy refused to be cowed. "My wife is totally okay with me dating. I just knew that you would be uncomfortable with the situation, that's why I didn't tell you I was married."

That's actually my second friend that happened to.

I never thought I'd be someone's side-chick. I feel terribly stupid, and I just don't think I'm cut out for dating in the 21st century. I'm the type of person who believes people when they tell me they like me. And who believes people if they tell me they can't wait to see me but they're busy and out of cell range for long periods of time. I'm apparently the type of person wearing a giant sign that says, "I'm dumb. Treat me badly!"

But at least I look young, right?

CATFISH

In my last post, I mourned the loss of Gigi's sanity, as she was busy bombarding eHarmony with emails and phone calls about how she had been "catfished" by an older woman named Ruth. This came about because when we tried to follow up with her erstwhile date, the caller ID said "Ruth Campbell."

That was all the proof that Gigi needed.

I tried to explain to her, from my vast years of dating wisdom, that just because a guy's phone is registered under another name does not mean that a 64-year-old woman from Texas is playing mind games with you. Perhaps Ruth was Jake's grandmother and his phone was linked to her. Perhaps his phone number last belonged to someone named Ruth Campbell and it hadn't been switched over yet. Anything was possible.

Gigi insisted. NO! Anything was NOT possible! She called eharmony and demanded that they not only remove "Jake's" account from their website, but that they also investigate Ruth Campbell and find her the real guy posing in the picture.

I finally gave up on her somewhere around the time she started making lists of common "life emergencies" that catfishers use to avoid actually meeting their victims in person (car accident; family illness; house fire). While Gigi continued her internet research, I went on with my own life.

Stratski felt that I should give Cal from California another go. After I had refused to go out with him when he kept me hanging all week, he apologized profusely and begged for a second chance. I acquiesced on the condition that he would alert me as to the day, time, and place all in advance. He decided basso, 6 p.m., Monday night.

Monday night arrived and Stratski coached me via phone as I pulled into the parking lot: "Don't hold it against Cal. He could be a really good guy, he just got off to a bad start."

I waited. Cal didn't show. At 6:15, he called to say he'd been in a car accident.

"It's very minor," he said. "Unfortunately, I can't leave until the police report is finished. Of course, I don't expect you to wait for me."

"It's all right," I said. "I have papers to grade. I'll just grade them here until you are finished with the police and we can have dinner."

2 hours later, he texted me. "It turns out my car DOES have major damage. I'm stranded on the side of the road. Want to come get me, haha?"

Gigi was beside herself. YOU ARE BEING CATFISHED!!!! she yelled. By this point, she had even found catfishing websites and software, the better to conduct her research.

The next day, Cal sent 6 follow up messages, alternately apologizing for standing me up and reiterating that it wasn't his fault. He begged me for (another) last chance. I had serious reservations at this point, thanks to G. So I decided the best way to see whether or not he was a real person was to Google him.

"What is your last name?" I asked.

Cal vanished.

Or, to be more accurate, he vanished for 3 or 4 weeks. Then he reappeared and begged for another chance again.

"Here's the deal," I texted him. "I don't think you're the guy in your pictures. I'll make you a deal. Write today's date on a Post-It note and snap a selfie holding that up for me. I'll believe you're who you claim to be when I get that."

Cal thanked me profusely and agreed that this was an excellent idea.

Then he didn't do it. After 24 hours passed without the selfie, I sent him a final email on the dating website: "Do NOT contact me again."

"Hey now," he immediately IM'd me. "That's not fair! I was just getting ready to take a selfie to send you!"

BLOCK.

He then tried texting me (not the selfie, mind you) begging for another chance. BLOCK.

It turns out Gigi's not just cynical; I'm naive. At the end of her research, Gigi discovered "Jake's" number listed and commented on by 23 other women who had been similarly wooed and then left hanging as, for one reason or another, he (or she????) couldn't meet them in person and vanished.

It's tough being a woman in the internet age.

Game Time.

Every man you will ever see with an online dating profile says the same thing: "No games! No drama! If you like that kind of thing, keep moving because I'm not the guy for you!"

I haven't seen any profiles for women, but I imagine they all say they aren't into the games and drama either. No one ever says, "I love mind games and emotional roller coasters! Pick me!"

Wait, I take that back. Once, I put that on my profile just to shake things up and be different. But that was tongue-in-cheek. No one would ever put that and mean to be taken seriously.

This is why it's unsettling that there are so many men who are all about the games and drama.

Take Tim, for example. Tim checked on me for days when I was sick. He offered me soup, asked how I was feeling; he told me what movies he was watching, and I told him what books I was reading. At various points over the course of the last several weeks, we even talked about why a serious relationship ended and how mental illness had affected people we knew.

Then the weekend arrived and BOOM! Nothing. No texts. No emails. No phone calls or check-ins. I even texted him to invite him to Cigar & Scotch Night, but he had completely vanished.

Dick. Move.

Why do I keep getting my hopes up?

Trying to bounce back, I grudgingly allowed my married co-workers to take control of my dating life. Over drinks, four of them decided that I possess many qualities that do not translate well to a computer screen, and that they will take things over from here. This could end terribly, but it can't be any worse than staying a perpetual back-burner girl for the Tims of the world, right?

So my co-worker Stratski decided I would go out on a date with a guy, we'll call him Cal. He is from California and travels a lot internationally. And as Stratski pointed out, he is also cute. But more importantly, he spells all his words right, which is the single criteria I have reduced all my online dating interactions to. I have zero patience with men who have a high school GED sending me emails that say, "Hi gorgis im a farmmer lol lets get a drink if u want too"

ARE YOU KIDDING ME RIGHT NOW!?!?!?! Did you not even read my profile and see that I am an English teacher?! IDIOT!!!!

Anyway, Cal spells all his words right and has a degree and likes to travel and doesn't look like a troll, so I acquiesced to Stratski's demands that I get back on the horse. At the beginning of the week, Cal asked if I could go out on Friday, and I said yes, anytime after about 3 or 4.

Enter the games and drama.

Cal was apparently too busy to bother making plans or confirming for the rest of the week. He texted me at 5:35 on Friday night, at which point I decided 'BYE, FELICIA!!!

I don't have time for this nonsense. I'm not sitting around all week and then all night waiting for you to decide what you feel like doing. When he finally texted me, I told him (truthfully) that I'd gotten tired of waiting and made other plans. (Bye Felicia was merely the subtext of my text, a gift from Gigi, who now wishes she had never taught me this phrase).

Speaking of Gigi, her dates aren't going well either, which just goes to show you that games and drama are no respecter of age --- Yeah, that's right, it turns out that Gigi is only 23 freaking years old! How this escaped my attention for the first 4 years we lived in the same apartment complex is a complete mystery, but it has severely hampered my ability to take her dating complaints seriously. Get back to me in a decade!

Nevertheless, Gigi takes her own complaints very seriously, and her most recent one was about Jake, a guy she met online and talked to for several weeks before agreeing to go out with. But Jake, too, pulled out the man-drama and vanished on the night of their would-be date. She never heard from him again.

Gigi wrote to eharmony insisting that she had been catfished by a woman named Ruth. She even found a random woman named Ruth on Facebook and sent the eharmony people Ruth's profile page, asking them to investigate her. I looked on in wonder and horror, but Gigi refused to believe me that no, some guys are just dicks. Some guys just flirt or act interested or say "let's go out!" but don't follow through because a better opportunity presents itself, and in the end, it's not really anything you did or didn't do... it just is what it is.

Tim. Cal. Jake... you're missing out. (See how I used the right kind of "your" there?)

Yoga, Massage, and the Art of Relaxation

My friend Mindy told me the other day that I need to either try yoga or get a massage because I text in CAPS too much, and that shows that I’m stressed out. To be fair, I am a little stressed out, but that’s because I’m teaching full-time and taking classes full time. I’m actually kind of impressed that I haven’t begun hyperventilating yet.

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN I’M WOUND UP TOO TIGHT!?!?!?” I texted Mindy. “IT STRESSES ME OUT WHEN PEOPLE TELL ME I’M STRESSED OUT!!!!!”

She was all, “Um, chill. I didn’t say you were wound too tight. I just suggested you take measures to relax.”

I considered the massage, but immediately rejected it. This is how a massage would go for me:

10 a.m. – lie on table

10:01 – start to get tickled by stranger

10:02 – try desperately to suppress laughter, so as not to hurt stranger’s feelings

10:03 – clench all muscles together in an effort to make self less ticklish

10:04 – narrowly avoid falling off table because squirming too much to get away from tickling

10:05 – fart on masseuse because of all clenching, tickling, and squirming

10:06 – crawl out door in shame

So that is out.

Then I considered yoga. Whoever invented yoga is making a fortune right now. I wish it had been me. I would be all, “Now I want you to bend your left arm around your right elbow and stand on the third toe of one foot while you breathe deeply and think of lotuses. Namaste. That will be $20.”

As you may have surmised, I have never tried yoga, that is just how I envision it going.

Yoga is one of those things that is really hip and mainstream right now, like eating sushi and wearing rompers. It’s like the in-thing to slap on some spandex and have a yoga mat slung over one shoulder, and I get that, okay? Part of me even wants to buy a yoga mat, just so I can sling it over one shoulder and walk around Clayton-DeMun looking like, “Yeah. I just came from yoga. Admire me.”

Why don’t I just GO to yoga, you ask? I am incredibly uncoordinated. I blame this on my maternal grandfather and his size 14 feet. While my feet are not as big as his, they are quite large for someone who is only 5’6’’ on a good day. Combined with the fact that they are also 3A narrow, I look kind of like a flag pole balancing on skis when I'm just standing still. So you see, the idea of trying to balance on only ONE ski, while wearing spandex and contorting into strange shapes in front of an audience does not appeal to me.

I decided to go look at art instead. Art is relaxing; I would go to the Art Museum. Plus, I would get points in my own head for being cool and cultured as opposed to hip and mainstream.

It turns out art is stressful. There is just SO MUCH OF IT AND IT IS EVERYWHERE!!! And it has all these paragraphs that I feel like I should read so that I can really “understand” the piece and what it is trying to say to me. And then if I give up and don’t read the captions, I KNOW that I am missing huge chunks of both form and sense! But then sometimes when I DO read the paragraphs, I still don’t understand what the hell is going on!!

Take Voyage of Life – Old Age. I tried to just look at that, but then I was like, “Is that angel his guardian angel? Or does it represent his soul leaving his body? Or—oh gosh!—is it the ornament from the helm of his ship and it has broken off and entered the realm of reality because he’s ready for the spiritual world? OH MY GOSH I BETTER READ THE PARAGRAPH TO FIND OUT WHAT IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING IN THIS PAINTING RIGHT NOW BUT THERE ARE LIKE 5,000 OTHER PAINTINGS IN THIS BUILDING THAT I NEED TO LOOK AT TOO AND NOW MY HEAD IS ABOUT TO EXPLODE!!!!!!!!!!!!

That’s what happens when I visit an Art Museum. The Met nearly killed me.

And so, now that I have ruled out massages, yoga, and art, it is on to margaritas… 

Train Wreck

I first tried alcohol in my twenties. My roommates gave me a wine cooler, not realizing that I hadn’t eaten that day, weighed 120 pounds, and had a compulsive personality.

“THIS IS FANTASTIC!” I announced. “I CAN’T FEEL MY LEGS!!!”

They took it away after I drank half. 

I didn’t drink again for a long time, but after I started teaching in North County, I wanted to be like everyone else. It’s no fun going out to happy hours on Friday with the rest of the staff if you’re just going to order water. But I didn’t know the “rules” of drinking, so I asked the guy who teaches next to me. He is a 6’4’’ black man covered in tattoos.

“I know you’re not supposed to drive drunk,” I began, “but how do I know when I’m drunk? Is it obvious?”

“Listen, E, here’s what you do. You go home and drink until you pass out. When you wake up, you cut that number in half. That’s your limit.”

That sounded mathematical enough. 

It took six other teachers vehemently refuting this theory to convince me that it was not an accurate way to measure how alcohol would affect me.

But how would I have known that? Not only had I never experimented with booze as a teenager, but most of my friends in college didn’t drink either. My siblings drank plenty, but they always felt they had to protect me from the knowledge of their transgressions. So I never really interacted much with Extremely Drunk People.

Until recently.

A friend called me and asked what I was doing.

“Making salsa,” I said.

“Why would you be making salsa right now?” he demanded. 

“I don’t know. I wanted some, so I decided to make it. What are you doing?” 

“I am calling to tell you that you are f***ing gorgeous. Like, I seriously just broke up with my girlfriend for you! Do you know how f***d up that is?! I woke up this morning and you were the first thing I thought of. You have F***D. ME. UP. Like, you are one of the 3 coolest people I know, and you don’t even know how great you are! But... you just don’t understand LIFE!”

I was nonplussed, horrified, and thrilled all at the same time. It was like watching a train wreck in slow motion, except a train wreck I actually cared about. I couldn’t remember having ever talked to a drunk friend before and I didn’t know what to do. Or what not to do. Or how to tell HOW drunk someone actually was.

“Okay,” I said. “Why don’t I understand Life?”

“EXACTLY!!!” he said. “And that is why we will never be together!”

“Okay,” I said again, stupidly.

“Look,” he continued, “I don’t even have central air conditioning in my house. I have one of those little boxes that blows cold air. It’s like… a box. So there’s that. And you would get tired of living where I live. Plus, you just don’t get life!!”

“Wait, is there more to the air conditioner analogy, or was that it?” I asked, trying to follow along.

“I’M PAINTING A PICTURE RIGHT NOW!” he bellowed. “I can’t fly you all over the country and I wouldn’t even if I could! I’m a guy’s guy. I like working in the dirt. And you… you like… Frontenac. You just don’t even know. You don’t get it. It’s like… we’re the same person, but you just don’t get it.”

“What don’t I get?!” I demanded.

He responded, “If you don’t get over here right now, we are THROUGH!” That made me laugh because it was so preposterous. Laughing is apparently the wrong thing to do when someone is drunk. It just made him mad.

“Look,” I finally said. “I’m not really sure what this call is about. You are clearly drunk, and this conversation is going nowhere. If you would like to ask me out on a date when you are sober, I will say yes.” And then I hung up.

A couple hours later, the text messages started, and those were equally as nuts.

That was several days ago. Since I hadn’t heard from the friend, I finally texted, “Are we still friends?”

“What? Why wouldn’t we be?” he replied.

Turns out he was “blackout drunk” that day and deleted his entire text history, as well as his Facebook page (I guess to avoid seeing whatever he had said or done). He said he’s even in the doghouse with his girlfriend over how blitzed he got.

That gave me pause. “Wait. So you didn’t break up with her?” I clarified.

“No, I did. Well…it’s complicated. Look, I can see I must owe you an apology for something I said or did when I was blacked out. I don’t know what it was, but I’m sorry. I don’t apologize often, but I must need to here.”

And that was that. How do you get a friendship back on track after something like that? He has NO memory of any of it. And I can’t erase any the memories I got stuck with!

Get down girl, go head get down

I have failed miserably at pretending Gigi is with me on dates, forcing me to be agreeable and sweet. If I go on a date with a guy I’m actually friends with, I do all right (and I also don’t write about it afterwards). But when I go on internet dates, I am like a wrecking ball.

Consider Mitch. He asked me out over the interwebs. When I clicked on his profile, I was greeted by pictures of him hiking Kilimanjaro, Everest, and whatever that mountain in Antarctica is called. Also, his favorite hotspots are in other countries and his pictures included photos of his multiple houses. I hated him immediately.

“I’m sorry, I cannot go out with you,” I typed. “You are too old. And also kind of braggy.”

Unlike most men, however, Mitch responded with a good deal of graciousness, which put me in my place. After that, I really had no choice but to go out with him.

In my lengthy and illustrious dating career, I have found that I prefer to meet people at Starbucks. That way if it’s terrible, it’s like an hour out of your life and you’re done! Also, because there’s a Starbucks on every corner, it’s pretty easy to find one. 

Mitch asked me to meet him at the Ritz.

Upon walking in, I immediately felt like a pauper. I wondered if people could tell my dress cost $16. I sat down in the hotel lobby and started grading papers, flatly refusing to go into the lounge until Mitch showed up. I wondered if people were wondering what a schoolteacher was doing in the lobby of the Ritz. Then I wondered if people wondered if I was wondering what they were wondering about me.

When Mitch escorted me to a corner of the lounge, it was quite clear he was at ease in this environment. Unlike I, who, when threatened, swell up to twice my regular size. Since I felt enormously out of place and also like everyone was pegging me for a gold-digger, I’m afraid all my intentions of being sweet and agreeable flew straight out of my head. Fortunately, the man I was with didn’t really care.

“Why aren’t you married?” Mitch demanded.

Interesting. Someone who was as direct as I!

“I was going to be, but then my ex decided to start a commune in his apartment without talking to me,” I said, “So things didn’t work out. Now. What do you look for in the women you date?”

“They have to be Intelligent. Interesting. Hot. And we have to have Chemistry.”

“That’s dumb,” I said. “If you had great chemistry with someone who wasn’t hot, you wouldn’t date her?”

“No. No one would.”

“I would and have,” I said.

“Oh yeah? How’d that work out for you?”

DAMN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

“So,” I said, switching tacks, “You have a lot of money. What are you doing for the world?” 

Mitch missed maybe one beat and then said, “Well, recently I’ve been investigating where the best place to invest my resources might be.”

“OOOOOOooooooooo,” I smiled mockingly. “Big deal. You’re investigating it. What are you actually doing to get your hands dirty in the messiness of other peoples’ lives?”

“I really like you!” Mitch announced. “I want to see you again. What do you think?”

“Meh,” I said, "I don't know. Maybe. I'll think about it."

Back at school, people live vicariously through me because they are mostly all married. They began calling me Anastasia. Having not seen 50 Shades of Grey, I assumed they were nicknaming me for a Russian princess, although I could not imagine what that had to do with my dating life. They found this hilarious and decided to call me Romanov instead.

They suggested one of my co-workers ask me out.

"No way!" he said. "She goes out with guys who take her to the Ritz! You know what kinda' Ritz I'd give her? Crackers." 

Crackers are more my style. I can't handle the stress of being a gold-digger. It makes me want to go to the chiropractor. 

Spineless

Gigi lives in the flat above mine. We spent 3 years smiling awkwardly as we passed each other in the stairwell before finally becoming friends. She is much nicer than me. Gigi is the type of person men generally like because she is charming and sweet.

I, on the other hand, am a Snake Bomb or some other kind of Independence Day trick -- fun to stare at in wonderment for a minute, but then what? The reason for this is because I am very defensive. My usual ploy is to hold people at arm’s length with my wit. Then they eventually lose interest and I feel let down. My mentor always says, “Don’t make things so difficult! People just want to be with someone who is easy and fun. They don’t want to constantly be challenged on everything.”

Unfortunately, I can’t seem to get the hang of being non-defensive and charming, like Gigi.

I went out with a chiropractor this weekend. The conversation went something like this:

Him: I’m a doctor of chiropractic. I just signed on with the Denver Broncos.

Me: Oh. So you’re like a witch doctor?

Him: Excuse me?

Me: Oh you know. Like, Oh hey, I’ll come see you and you’ll press on my bones magically and then BLAMO! My migraines are gone! Sounds like witchery to me.

Him: [Long, drawn out explanation of what chiropractic entails]

Me: How interesting. I’ve never gone to see a chiropractor. If my back hurts, I just find the biggest teacher at school and ask him to pick me up and shake me out. It works great.

As you can see, these conversations do not show me at my best. Actually, I’m not sure I have a best. I’m too prickly to do well in the dating world. The only other extreme I have is exhibiting disinterest and boredom. In that scenario, even my wit deserts me and I stare at my date and wonder what his head would look like on a dolphin’s body or something.

Between being boring and being feisty, I’m hard-pressed to say which is worse. My dad always tells me, “Sarcasm is the lowest form of humor.” He wants me to eschew sarcasm and be sweet and kind, I guess. He’s probably worried about me because I’m old now. He once warned me that if I didn’t get it together, I’d be left alone in life, an old maid by 26.

LOOK WHO’S LAUGHING NOW, POP!!! I’m an even older maid than you ever dreamed!!!!

Wait a minute.

The point to all this is that I need to be more like Gigi. When someone asks me to have dinner in the CWE, I need to not say things like, “I can’t. I’ll start cursing on the 20 minute walk from my car to the restaurant and then I’ll lose my car because I parked so far away and I’ll end up wandering around forever and hating you because you are the reason I lost my car.”

I need to learn to smile sweetly, bat my eyelashes and say, “Whah yeeees! Ah would luhv to have dinnah with you!” (bat, bat, bat). That’s what Gigi would do. She would throw some dimples in there, too, for good measure. Then she would come home and yell to me about everything that’s wrong with the guy.

I hate letting down my defenses like that, though. Even the thought of it is very unsettling. My friend J-Mo says I have a marshmallow center, but I suppose I’d rather have the feisty, prickly part of me rejected than the soft, squishy inside.

That, and when it comes to following the path of least resistance, I prefer amusing myself over catering to the expectations of what I should be and do and say. I know Midwestern girls are supposed to be demure and beautiful and modest and acquiescing. I just can’t seem to force myself. It kicks against the goads!

I’ve decided there must be a balance. From now on, when I’m on dates, I’m going to pretend Gigi is sitting next to me telling me nice and adoring things to say, such as, “Wow, the Denver Broncos! You must be so talented at pressing people’s spines!”

I’ll say those things until I start seeing dolphin-heads. After that point, it's every man for himself. I can only bend so far.