Today’s Date Is

The other day, while I sat sharing my porch with a malt beverage, as so often happens, I got to thinking and, as you know, most of you anyway, thinking and drinking are not exactly cut from the same cloth.  In my case it could be dangerous.  But, be that as it may, I tend to do it anyway.

This time, my thoughts turned to dating.  Yes, that dating. Not carbon dating as you may suspect.  I have been off the market for a while now (spelled forever) and got to musing about how much it has changed.  I’m talking dating in general, not about me and a female relationship.  I’m afraid that ship has sailed and probably, by now, sunk.

I remember when us young guys were responsible for finding a fair maiden by ourselves and convincing her that the pile of testosterone standing in front of her was worth investigating.  We didn’t have a bunch of pictures to choose from.  They were still be used by the police for lineups.  No, we were out there, in all our splendor, real or imagined, plowing the fields, looking for a fertile relationship, also known as a girlfriend.  There was nowhere to hide.  And of course, the same applied to the object of our affection.  She was everything we imagined she was, right up until we got to know each other.

But, that was then.  Before women had tattoos and men wore earrings.  A time when you could tell the sexes apart from behind partly because of the length of their hair.  Back when you actually had to talk to each other. Face to face. The feeling out process (I said out, not up) began slowly, often with holding hands, leading to the first kiss.  The phrase ‘scoring’ still pertained to sports.  Today, our mores have evolved into beating a path to the bed.  Can’t say I have a problem with that.  I’m just saying that it only applied if you put a move on the wrong girl and her dad found out. You might spend some time in one then.

I’m glad I grew up when I did.  If you were a homely kid, you owned it.  Today, you just post someone else’s picture. I can’t imagine picking a date based on a profile written by someone as desperate as you for companionship.  Shouldn’t that raise an alarm?  Shouldn’t it cross your mind that ‘what you see is what you get’ might not apply here, for either of you? That one of you, or both, may have just gilded the lily a tad, and that if you were looking for each other in a mall, you may never find each other?  That, when staring into each others eyes for the first time, the only thing you can think of is ‘who the hell is this’?  You might tell a friend “I am dating a new girl and he says “is she cute”?  And you say “I don’t know.  I haven’t met her yet, but here’s a picture of what she is supposed to look like”. She will probably turn out to be the girl that, when I was young, was described with ‘she has a great personality’.

So, a tip of my brew to all you singles out there that are looking for love in a phone. I wish you luck so you can brag to all your imaginary friends on Facebook. I for one still prefer the good old days when I could ogle (secretly of course) all the girls, select the ones I wanted to date, and after an extensive screening process, date one of them.  That would be the one that didn’t laugh when I asked her out or give you the ‘are you out of your mind’ look.  It simply was the one that said yes.