Dating.  Karaoke.

Those two words make me cringe.  They have come up recently in my life, and because I can only tackle one frightening thing at a time, I’ll choose the subject of dating.

The topic has been floating around a lot lately between friends and co-workers.  We ask each other:  “How much younger?  Older?  Short?  Tall?  Type?”

“Match.com?”  shudder.

“Speed dating?”  nothing but crickets.

I have to face the facts.  My dating life has been…less than stellar.  Not only the number of dates, but the dates and relationships themselves.  Let’s see, in the beginning of my career there was:

– My first boyfriend when I was 15 years old.  It was a short-lived romance that started with meeting cute at a local fair over sno-cones.  It began to fizzle because I couldn’t get used to the way he kept throwing his tongue inside my mouth.  Because of my inexperience, I thought, is this what kissing is?  But I lacked the confidence to shout, “If I wanted tongue, I would have ordered tongue!”  I think it was his technique.  Yes, I’m sure he was the problem.

– The tourist visiting his grandmother.  We met while I was driving with a friend in town and he was riding his bicycle.  It’s complicated.  He should have been my first kiss, because – well, never mind.  I don’t know you that well yet, so I won’t go into it.  Anyways, he soon had to return to one of those funny-sounding cities in Washington.  He never responded to the letter I sent him.  That was before email, texting, Facebook.  It was so much easier to ignore people back then.

– Another short-lived romance was with a soldier stationed at the local military base.  “An Officer and a Gentlewoman” you say?  Not quite.  I met him when I took some friends’ kids roller skating.  He had a side job being one of those roller referees?  Monitors?  God JonBonJovi, it all sounds so bizarre when I say it out loud.  Anyways, we didn’t talk much – there was no need.  However, I realized there was a problem when I was writing to him and I didn’t know how he spelled his name.  Oops.

Wow, it’s kind of embarrassing looking back at those “relationships”.  And it doesn’t end there.  I’ve had some blind dates and interest from guys that make me question my ability as a female.  That’s why, when a friend was talking about a recent singles gathering called “Lock and Key”, I had all sorts of haunting images fly at me, from 60 year-old men who lived with their twin brothers to no one approaching me at all.

At work, I had been talking to one of the custodians and I mentioned that only crazy guys were interested in me.  His response:  “How come?  You nice!  You no fat!”

Yes, indeed.  Me no fat…I nice!  How come?