Thoughts On Defensive Dating

To be sure, this photo is from a science fiction episode of The Twilight Zone.

But it could just as easily be an example of the revelation of dating in barlighting. A tad more on that momentarily.

Some feller with the amusingly ironic last name of Dave Singleton, recently posted an article for Match.com on the subject of defensive dating, and how to recognize some of the signs that you might have lots of bad dates because you are a 'defensive' dater.

For example, one of the general indicators of a "defensive dater" is under the category of "the uncomfortable topic cringe". Which appears to be clearly displayed in the photo, as if the creature on the other side of the window just asked William Shatner that classic uncomfortable question, "new in town, sailor?". In the voice of Yoda.

I know a thing or two I've met in barlighting, but I digress.

Anyway, the article addresses tips that let one know that they might be a "defensive dater", and gives a series of tips to help one change their defensive dating behavior.

Well, the article writer did NOT interview the ultimate defensive dater for this article, so I reckon his information is, at best, incomplete. At worst, it's...incomplete.

The writer should have interviewed me.

I reckon that I am the ultimate "defensive dater": I haven't been on an actual 'date' since 2002. Now I ax ya...how much more defensive can one get?

It's on accounta cuz I'm a gentleman. And boring as watching paint dry. Why would I subject a woman I like to an evening of that? The reason I wouldn't subject a woman I don't like to it is just as rational: if I don't like her, why be around or spend money on her?

Ya gotta admit...I'm practical in a sorta thoughtful way.

And thanks to my even more pathetic pet rock, Seymour, I have more tips to help you be a better "defensive dater":

- a good first impression for the defensive dater is at a fast food restaurant. And when you're looking over the menu, pull out a calculator and tally the bill to the penny, letting her know that's all you can afford.

- show up wearing body armor. The helmet with the closeable face shield adds clarity to any "WTF?" thoughts a date might have at being so met. You don't need to include a battle ax, especially if her mother is around.

- upon arrival, don't bring her flowers, candy, etc...give her a list of 'talking points' for the evening. What's okay to bring up, and what ain't. Food, sex, and football are okay. Most everything else...*BUZZZZZZZZZER*. Any violation of the list, and she pays her own tab.

- don't be witty, funny, charismatic or any other kind of verbal firearm. A dull, thousand yard stare, with occasional drool out one side of the mouth, has never failed me in getting a totally bogus phone number, if I get that much.

- look repeatedly at your cell phone, and tell your 'date' that your mom expects you home early to clean the catbox.

- by all means, fart at the first embarrassing opportunity, and blame her.

Seymour had more stuff on the list, but offering your date as a human sacrifice to a volcano was more fitting 2,000 years ago; it's not always easy to keep a timeless rock thinking contemporarily.

BTW...this is what happens when your blog author has a night of 'writer's block' on his hands: crappy posts.

Told ya I wuz boring...

Dating Baiting

And you think all I've ever done was scam-baiting, didn't ya?

Well before I had received my first email scam, I had taken a few pokes at snail mail solicitations, too. Getting back to the lighter side of dating and dating soivices, my little pre-Valentine's Day prod at eHarmony.com (which still hasn't drawn a response from them) wasn't the first time I'd undertaken to poke a little fun at those who -- for money -- seek to be the grand arbiter of anything relationshipanal. And if that ain't a real word, it just became one hyar.

Back in the mid-80s, and in the wake of learning that my one true love was no longer remotely available to me via matrimony elsewhere, I was a tad on the emotionally destitute side. Sometimes a believer in 'things happening for reasons', I not long thereafter was the recipient of a snail mail solicitation for hep. Hep in finding "that special someone". A company that was nationally-renown at the time, decided that I needed hep.

Before I could ponder just how they could know I needed hep, I realized that it was just another of them 'bulk mailing' things. But what the heck: I could read into it anything I wanted, and I was a wounded free agent at that moment.

The company had a smattering of locations in the Metro area, so I selected the closest one to me and scheduled an appointment. No harm in hearing what they had to say, right? I mean, they did contact me, offering to hep.

I needed hep alright...

Arriving at the location, I sat down in a somewhat spartan reception area, and awaited the associate "assigned to hep" me. When she entered, I was momentarily nonplused: she was stunning in appearance. She greeted me ever so sweetly, introduced herself, and invited me back to her cubicle. For a couple moments, she made small talk, complimenting me on my appearance, etc, yada foo-foo.

And then she shifted gears like a high-balling trucker, and launched into her 'take no prisoners' sales pitch:

She: Are you ready to make a change?

Me: Uh, I suppose so. What am I changing?

She: Your whole approach to dating. Your whole approach to selling yourself. Are you ready to make that change?

Me: Uh, well, tell me more and we'll...

She: *leaning forward and more aggressively*...ARE YOU READY TO MAKE A CHANGE? Me: Uh...

She then settled into a talking points presentation about her company, how it worked, what it did for their clients, and what they expected of their clients. With, at regular intervals, assertions that "here, our members are ready to make a change".

I was starting to get this funny feeling, as if I had landed myself inside a Stephen King short story, like Quitters, Inc.. If you're not familiar with that story, it was about a place where smokers went when they thought they wanted to quit. None of them realized that, once signed up, they were signed up for life. Or death. There was no failure in their program. Ever. As she continued to pitch 'the program', along with ever-persistent insertions of the phrase, "are you ready to make a change?", I started to get this mental image of my beautiful sales associate, morphing into a snarling, whip-wielding Naziette, cracking the whip, screaming "ARE YOU READY TO MAKE A CHANGE, YOU SPINELESS PUPPY! YES OR NO, DAMN YOU!!!? SIGN ZE PAPERS, YOU PIG! VE HAVE VAYS OF MAKING YOU SIGN ZE PAPERS!!!".

I really do need to have a serious heart-to-heart with my imagination, but I digress.

At any rate, she kept pressing, and I kept non-committing, all the while using my dead-pan poker expression to wait for the proverbial "other shoe to drop": what it was gonna cost. I knew that this Valkyrie-like goddess-in-PMS-mode was herding me that way. For those of you who don't know what a Valkyrie is, imagine the entity that arose from the Ark of the Covenant in the first Indiana Jones movie, and what it did seconds later, and you get the general ideer.

Finally, "the other shoe" fell. If I signed up for their "basic package", I would need to make a full, up-front payment of only $1600.00.

*TOING* That one hit my wallet right between the eyes. But not as hard as the "special running now...for only $2199, not only would I get additional 'services', but I could put it on a credit card.

This was a 'special'?

After my adrenal gland had relaxed and taken the pressure off my sphincter -- all the while, Madam "Change" was staring two razor-sharp eyeholes through my soul -- I started to say that I'd like a day to mull it over. But before I could finish the sentence, I was hit with...(all together now)... "ARE YOU READY TO MAKE A CHANGE, OR AREN'T YOU?"

It seemed an appropo moment to borrow a line from none other than Cary Grant, from the movie Father Goose in reply, and I did so emphatically: "I aren't". And with that, I got up to beat a (barely) dignified, hasty retreat, before the iron bars slammed in front of me, trapping me with Madam Iron Box, until I signed ze papers. As I was leaving, I heard her faux *sigh* and say, "I guess you weren't as ready to make a change as I thought".

No sh**, Madam Iron Box (no, I didn't really say that...but something close was just within lip range).

Having barely (it seemed) gotten out of there with my life, freedom and my wallet, I figured that'd be the last I'd hear of this company, since I wasn't that ready to make a change. But a month later, here came another snail mail solicitation from them. This time, with me as the specific addressee. Inside was a 'personality profile' for me to fill out.

Another *TOING*, but not that kind. It was the kind that, in time, would become a baaaaad Skunk *TOING*

Using up time some assert that I have too much of, I completely redesigned their survey, allowing my in-need-of-a-heart-to-heart imagination to run just a touch amok, by including the earlier image in the questions/answers section. I wish I'd kept a copy of the finished product.

Or better still it's probably best I didn't.

At any rate, once done I mailed it to them, figuring that'd be that.

Well, times have changed. Now, a baited company generally tends to ignore smart asses like me. But not then. I got, on corporate letterhead, a snarky reply as thanks to my 'suggestions' about their survey, that said in part (I am paraphrasing here): We are a serious business, and you are not what we consider client-worthy.

I couldn't have agreed more, then and since.

Though, my client-unworthyness didn't stop them from sending me unsolicited mailings over the next ten or so years. Or for a few years after I went online, either. But one email reply in 1999, reminding them who I was -- and asking if Madam Iron Box was still whipping prospectives into compliant, ready-to-change clientele -- finally got them to make a change.

They -- Great Expectations -- quit contacting yours truly. *Whew*

hOOPs

From the website archives...

Fall ushers in the end of baseball. Football is well underway. Hockey is getting tuned up. And so, sadly, is basketball.

Yeah, I know: lots of folks dig basketball. I ain't one of 'em.

In my younger days, I was so-so overall in sports: pretty good in kickball, dodgeball, football and track (I had good speed and good hands in those days, which was also sometimes helpful on dates). I was good in two-man volleyball, okay in softball, floor hockey and team handball (a sporting mix of football, soccer and hand-to-hand combat). I was substandard in baseball, and miserably abysmal in basketball.

Basketball...ack phooey. I hate the sport. My only favorite thing about basketball season is the end of it. But I was subjected to it anyway, in junior and high school gym class. I sucked at it. My classmates knew I sucked at it, and knew I knew I sucked at it. So when the class got to the time of year we started playing basketball, it was time for Skunky to do what Skunky did best: foul. On those rare occasions my shot actually went into and through the basket, teammates, opponents, coaches and whatever spectators there were, all stopped and stared, as if they'd seen a reconstitution of one of the x number of Wonders of the World or something.

Fact was, even at 6' 2", the local elementary school teams wouldn't have taken me if there'd been a waiver program for the junior/high schools to deal me on.

Naturally, I took this marked lack of talent into college, with absolutely no intention of demonstrating it any further. However, friends convinced me to join an intramural basketball league and be on their team, even though one of them knew my reputation from high school, having been a classmate. It didn't hurt that at the time, I was dating an absolute angel who was also a basketball fan of the first order.

The things we do for what we took for love in those days, but I digress.

I joined a team with varied skills at the game: two who'd played high school competitive basketball; one who was a balanced athlete in numerous sports; another who was there for the fun and little else; and me, the anti-Chamberlain (Michael Jordan was not yet a household word in the mid-late 70s). All together, we were a team of record-breaking caliber, and in our first match-up, we proved it. We met a team of five guys who'd played together on their high school varsity team. It was their polish versus our potpourri. And we set a record I somehow think will forever stand: we lost, 75-8.

That's not a typo.

The coordinator of the intramural program -- the same guy who'd encouraged me to join, insisting it was "all in fun and all talent levels were welcome" -- expressed his wish to us that night that our team disband. In his words (less a couple colorful metaphors), "you guys are just gawdawful".

That got our collective hackles up, after his original greasy assurances, and we decided to see the season through. All 8 games of it. The coordinator was nonplussed, while our opponents admired and applauded our fortitude, appreciating our being the equivalent of a free spot on a bingo card.

I will say that we actually did improve with each game -- in our second 'game', we did score into the double digits, and were only flogged by 40 some-odd points -- and were actually in a couple of the latter games up to the end of the first minute of play. We even won a game, so as to finish 1-7, and holding the coveted 'bottom' of the league (no stress in having to look over ones' shoulder for anyone trying to catch us, which was how we looked at it). We won that game using all the practiced skills and lessons we'd learned throughout the season. And in some small part because our opponent -- at that point a 2-5 team themselves -- failed to show up, allowing us to win via forfeit.

They obviously didn't realize it was us they were supposed to play.

Bottom line for me: it was a season to remember to forget. Unlike the angel I was dating in those days, Terry. She didn't care that I missed lay ups or fouled with a statistical regularity that was truly *yawn*; she believed, at least back then, that I had other attributes, but I digress again.

Just for the record, in our 7 games, I scored 13 points, never made a lay-up, had 3 or 4 rebounds (purely by accident) and committed 28 fouls, without fouling out of a single game. I would have made an almost credible Denver Nugget, back when they really sucked.

Then again, even when they sucked, the Denver Nuggets were never that bad.

So don't look for me to get excited about basketball season. Give me football, or bowling, TV remote aerobics, or my very fond memories of chasing Terry around, which was a helluva lot more fun than drooling a stupid basketball. Even if I found myself to be as out of my class with Terry, as I was on the basketball diamond, trying to pass to the power tackle.

Whatever.