My Dating Life--The Saga Continues

I know this may come as a deep shock, but I don't have a lot of friends.

Aunt Sally stopped talking to me when she passed away, so now my "Friends List" is very limited. I do try to have a social life beyond Facebook.

This may be why I don't have any friends, because I talk to myself on Twitter.  So, one day last week when this really cute guy I had briefly met years earlier "Facebooked" me out of the blue and asked if I would meet him at Starbucks "just to talk," I was elated.

I just knew that my life was finally turning around.  Life was going to be good.  I was finally going to get married.  Probably.

I was cautiously optimistic as I prepared for my big Starbucks date.  Of course,  I had already done the word math in my own head.

I don't charge people for going out with me, though I should offer some type of written guarantee.

Not having a boyfriend is the one part of life I have completely mastered.  My dating life has become nothing more than a desperate cry for help.  Not to brag or anything, but I could easily win a trophy for being a failure at dating.

I tend to give myself false hope and that is what I really love about me.  This time was no different. With lots and lots of makeup I tried desperately to look better than a moderately attractive zoo animal.

I've tried asking guys out myself, but they always look at me like I just asked them to donate a brain.  Then, they try to run away from me like I am the electric bill or a crying baby.

So, a date that was not imaginary was a pretty big deal to me. The sheer volume of hope that I had injected into myself began to consume the inside of my own head.  The pressure of the suffocation of my sanity and the reality of the situation became completely unbearable for me before I even made it to Starbucks.

As I pulled in, it glowed.  Not my head...Starbucks.

I parked beside an old, old, old 1960's beat up Ford truck that had not one, but two buckets underneath it catching whatever comes out of old Ford trucks.  My pathetic delusions of meeting Prince Charming tonight began to fade as I realized it was the only vehicle in the parking lot besides mine, which needed no buckets, just Prince Charming.

To make a short story long, I entered Starbucks with distinct uneasiness and spotted him right away.  It had been years, but he was still great looking and had an amazing smile.

I sat down, though a bit nervous, as Starbucks was not this amazing fortress of romance I had dreamt it was.    As he slurped on Green Tea (literally green) and talked incessantly about his recent ex-girlfriend, the conversation quickly began to hold a death-grip on me.  His beautiful white teeth slowly turned putrid green.

I stared out the window at the truck, at the green tea and then his phone that kept beeping.  He would stop mid-conversation and smile John Deere Green so he could return a text to whoever he was flirting with on the phone.   The text messages were the only pauses between him going on and on (and on) about his ex-girlfriend.

Normally, my brain has an infinite capacity to bring itself back to life on its own after being pummeled with someone else's problems.  I felt the conversational death-grip begin to kill it. Maybe I would need someone to donate a brain to me after all.

He finally stopped long enough to ask me about me.  Before I had five words out, somehow, those few words reminded him of his "horrible" ex-girlfriend who had misjudged him.  After all, he had tossed the woman's two year old daughter out of his recliner because that was HIS recliner so she should understand and stop being horrible.

I just sat there, my brain cells rapidly dying and hating me.  The supply of kindness I had was completely exhausted.  I wanted to make a break for it...and spill those buckets under the truck for HazMat to clean up.

My once friendly brain cells were screaming at me.

But, just as I was about to give up hope so I could go ahead and die by the condiments, he finished texting whoever he really wanted to go see and said he had to "go workout" at Planet Fitness.  It was 10:00 p.m.

As he stood up, he gave me a hug and said that he wasn't ready for a relationship and that I was a great friend for listening.  He said I deserved some special award for listening to all of his problems.  Yep, I'll just put it right along beside my other awards.

This was his status a few days later on Facebook:

Ok, so I need to add a few more trophies to my collection: