Mystery Date

First Dates are a bitch.

You never know what's going to happen, or what to say, and invariably it's a bad hair day. Now with this Internet Dating thing, it's like that game "Mystery Date" that my cousin Dana had when I was pre-pubescent and innocent. It was a really stupid game. All you did was roll the dice and open a little door to find out if your date was Mr. Wonderful (dressed in a tuxedo and carrying flowers, I believe) or Mr. What-Were-You-Thinking (a kinda Johnny Depp Seattle Grunge reject), or any number of different types in between. I have no idea why, but I wanted that game really really bad.

Ha! Be careful what you wish for . . .

After weeding out a bunch of the internet date prospects and conducting the obligatory telephone screening process, I set up a few coffee dates. The coffee date is our societies currently accepted way of meeting a blind date. With the coffee date you can always say Aw Gee I already made dinner plans, gotta-run-see-ya -bye. This way you haven't tied yourself into an excrusiating evening of dining with someone who keeps talking incessantly about their ex who left him at the alter or all the ugly, fat women who are pretending to be Jessica Alba, and how could they do that to him, never mind that HIS photo was taken his senior year of high school and that quarterback physique has long since turned to fat and there is more hair on his back then there is on his head.

So, anyway, I arrange to met this man, Bobby the Bearded, at a coffee shop. I get there before him and seat myself at a table and soon enough a man approaches me with that oh-thank-god-she's-not-a-dog kind of smile on his face. I look around somewhat frantically, hoping that there is actually some other woman that this man is smiling at.

Because this is not Bobby the Bearded.

And it was indeed yours truly that he was smiling at. Now, I have no clue who this man is, but he knows my name so obviously I must have set a date up with him.

My mind is racing and I'm wondering if I somehow set up dates with two men at the same time, and oh my god what if Bobby the Bearded shows up too and how in gods name did I get myself into this mess and who is this man?

People, you can't make this shit up!

Now, at this point it probably would have been a good idea for me to fess up to my mistake, apologize and say gee I'm really sorry but who the hell are you? But nooooo. I stand there dumbstruck with this idiotic smile on my face and quickly usher him to a table behind a palm tree where I am hidden but can see if Bobby the Bearded shows up.

Conversation is rocky at first, and I'm certainly not helping matters by having my attention divided. But as the minutes pass and Bobby didn't show up I began to relax and concentrate on my date. Now, by this point I have totally missed my opportunity to gracefully explain that I don't know this man's name without looking like a total moron. So I just stay quiet and hope that something he says will jog my memory and I'll be able to figure out who he is.

Before I know it a couple of hours have passed with some light and lively conversation, and when we are about to part ways, he asks if he could see me again and I say sure I'd enjoy that.

Of course I suddenly realize that I still don't know his name, and I'm thinking that this would probably be good information to have at this point, and I suspect that just calling him Bubba won't go over so well.

Thinking quickly (why I couldn't have thought as quickly earlier will forever remain a mystery) I ask him to call me the day before our date to confirm, cause you know how flaky people can be ha ha ha (oh if he only knew). See I figure if he calls then he'll have to say "Hi this is so-and-so". This way I will actually know his name when he picks me up and if that didn't work I figure I can always rummage through his glove compartment when he's not looking and find his car registration or something.

As we are walking to our respective cars, at long last, Mr. Mystery mentions his cat who has this unusual name and the light bulb, dim tho it may be, finally clicks on!

Sure enough, when I got home and grabbed my date cheat sheet, there he was, just below Bobby the Bearded. Paul the Virtuous with the cat of the unusual name. I must have written the date down under the wrong name.

I still don't know what happened to Bobby the Bearded. And quite frankly, I'm a little afraid to find out!