I try to have a date once a year, whether I need one or not. 
Actually, most of the time I don’t miss dating – for somebody that always wanted to be “happily ever after,” I seem to have spent most of my life as “single father.” Most days now the “what-ifs” are far, far behind me because dwelling on them isn’t helpful. No matter what your path in life, dwelling on “what might have been” is a recipe for bitterness. So this is who I am *today*, this is what I want to do *today*. I was never truly alone in raising my son; family and friends have always been there to help when I needed them, and I’ve been blessed with a good kid young adult that has good common sense and morals. (And since I know he doesn’t read this, I can safely say that I know where he gets that lazy streak – definitely from me. I’ve just had more years of practice kicking myself into gear to do the things that must be done.)
So I keep myself busy with a smorgasborg of fun, blogging is my latest toy, but my leisure time runs the gamut from online gaming to golf to bowling to country & western dancing to season tickets to the ballet to skydiving. I excel at leisure.
But every once in a while, I start to have these wandering thoughts that maybe it’s been enough time … and the last time I had these bizarre thoughts was April 29. I know that because I blogged about it. Aha, now I know what blogs are for! In April, I uploaded a picture and briefly created a profile on Yahoo Personals. I don’t know what I was thinking that day, it felt like I was shopping on eBay. Since I only did the free thing, I can’t actually send any messages to people, but they have “Icebreakers,” a choice of several one-liners you can send. So my brief experience with Yahoo Personals mostly consisted of older women sending an “I LIKE YOUR PROFILE” Icebreaker, and me sending an “I LIKE YOUR PROFILE, TOO” or “RIGHT BACK AT YOU” or “WHOA ARE THOSE THINGS REAL” “NICE PICTURE”. It’s not very interesting, and I decided to remove that profile before something contagious happened to me.
Except one woman with a paid account emailed me and we’ve been exchanging small talk since then. She has no profile so except for the fact that she’s spent time in East Texas, I know nothing about her. After nearly 3 months of small talk like “How are you today?” and “I’ve been busy at work, how about you?” type of exchanges, she asked me to meet her for drinks tonight.
Frankly, I think this is a bad idea. For all I know she’s prohibited from contacting any of her former boyfriends because of court orders, or she’s the Chairwoman of the Toothless Society of America. So when she asked me out, of course I said “yes.” I never seem to do what’s good for me. If the date goes well, I’ll have somebody to take to see chick flicks. And if the date goes poorly, I’ll have something interesting to write about.
I’ll know more in …4½ hours.
Chasing the Wind 
Leave a reply to Courtney Cancel reply