"Put Them In a Room Together and See If They'll Mate"
by Muffin
A few months back, one of my friends went on a crusade to find me a woman. I barely survived.
We were sitting in the sauna: a place of reflection, and mental and physical relaxation. We chatted about how her kids were doing at college, and how proud she was of them. Without thinking through the possible ramifications, I said, "Gee it must be nice to have such terrific kids." And not realizing it, in those words I doomed myself. My friend got it inside her head that I needed a mate, and she set out to do something about it.
I think her approach to dating was from the school of "Put them in a room together and see if they mate." She drafted a prioritized list of candidates, insisting that I should work my way through the list until something happened. Well, something did happen, but it wasn't pretty.
Candidate number one:
We chatted on the phone a couple of times, and made arrangements to meet
at the bookstore. Safe, neutral, didn't have to worry about the weather.
Her son (a six year old sweetie who had just learned how to read) was pretty
cool, and we had a nice time doing the kid's book thing. She, however, was
fresh out of bad marriage, and for lord knows what reason, kept wanting to
talk about it. Somehow none of this had come out in the phone conversations.
Holy sweet mother of god, it was worse than spending a couple of hours with
a client in need of counselling. I have had better one-way conversations
sitting in the dentist's chair having root canals. When my friend who had
set us up asked for a report, I threatened to bludgeon her out of revenge.
Candidate number two:
This date was in a public park, and all in all was not a bad time, but it
did get a little weird. It was crashed by a youngster who happened along
and wanted to fly my kite. So there I was, trying to hold a conversation
with my date, while at the same time trying to keep the youngster from being
blown into Lake Superior (it's a really big kite). After the kite flying,
we still couldn't shake the little guy. By the end of the afternoon, the
kid was ready to propose to my date, and my date was ready to place him in
her primary school class. When my friend who had set us up together asked
me how it had gone, I had a hard time explaining it to her: "Uh, well, uh,
there was this ten year old, see, and like he sortta horned in on things,
and . . . ." (Unfortunately, although the date was a really nice person,
we just didn't have much in common, so it never went any further.)
Candidate number three:
I pulled the plug preemptively on this one. My friend said, "You'll really
like her. She's really pretty." Alarm bells started ringing. The potential
date wasn't describe as friendly and pretty, or smart and pretty, or funny
and pretty; just really pretty. I asked my friend how long she had known
her, and she replied "many years," but she was unable to describe the candidate
as anything as other than really pretty. Interests? None. Activities? None.
Any degrees? None. Her career? None. I asked her why this person was even
on the list, and she replied, "Because you're a guy and she's really pretty,
you know, really pretty, and you're a guy." "So?" I replied. "Well," she
explained, "You're a guy, and she's really pretty, so I thought you might,
you know, might like to, well, you know. I just thought you might like to,
well, you know. She's really pretty." Through all this my friend was turning
beet red with embarrassment, for she was not the sort of person who would
ever feel comfortable discussing certain subjects.
That's when I finally twigged in to her approach to dating; "Put them in a room together and see if they mate." Yikes!
Posted 1/16/02