Define: Date

As I was rooting through all my trash 'n' treasures on Sunday afternoon, I came across two keychains that had miniature Yamaha harmonicas attached. These were given to me by a guy I met (and dated a couple of times) a thousand years ago, post-divorce-#1, when I was living in Dallas, working for IBM, and playing piano evenings at the Loews Anatole Lobby Bar. The guy was a sales rep for Yamaha, and these were little marketing goodies that he would hand out at trade shows. Who knows why I've held onto these harmonicas for (2008-1982) years? Sometimes I just hang onto things that I just don't know what else to do with.

On Monday morning, as I was getting ready to go to work, Boston tried to give the harmonica key chain back to me. I told him he could keep it. He said, "But your friend gave it to you." I said, "Oh, Boston, that was just some guy I dated a thousand years ago." He said, "But didn't you like him?" I replied, "I hardly remember him." Aghast, he replied, "But you dated him." (He clearly did not understand the process, this darling little innocent.) I said, "Boston, I've probably dated a hundred guys." His jaw dropped. "A hundred? Really?" He seemed flabbergasted.

At that point I started my drive to work, but all day I was thinking about the men I've dated throughout my dating career. (Let's admit that my dating career has had more longevity than any of my other careers!) I folded a piece of copy paper at work and, as I was performing other tasks, would write down names as they popped into my head. Thirty, forty, fifty, sixty. I never got to a hundred. When I got home I told Boston, "I was wrong. It wasn't a hundred. It was probably seventy." I didn't tell him this, but I think his grandfather has dated, maybe, five women. Surely fewer than ten.

There were many whose names I couldn't remember. In fact, the list was quite humorous. (I think I feel a book coming on.) There was Annapolis IT guy/actor, wierd IBM guy, GW doctor, FCC lawyer who never drove his Mercedes, health club guy who flirted with all the girls on exercise bikes, . . . . There are a few I remember with rancor. There are many I remember with great fondness. There are two or three in particular that, if I heard they were divorced or widowed (and that GMP no longer smoked), I'd be dialing 4*1*1 faster than you can say "What's that hottie's number?"

As I recall, my first real date was in eighth grade with Donny L. We double-dated with Merilee G. and (who was she dating? Randy F.?). I think we went to the Central Florida Fair on a Saturday night. I had no boobs. (Ummm, no longer have that affliction.) She told me to poof up the top of my sweatshirt and keep my arms folded under it all night long so it would look like I had boobs. Years later Donny (with whom I have a mutual admiration society to this day) told me he wasn't fooled. Merilee was also adopted. (My mother said, "All you adopted kids had problems." Well, ducking Fuh! I think we could do a little finger-pointing here and find out why we all had problems!) Merilee, rest her pour tortured soul, died of a drug overdose in her mid-thirties. When she was 16 and on a trip to Europe with her grotesque, obese, dentist Adventist adopted father, Merilee walked in on him in bed with some chickie in the European hotel room and slit her wrists later that evening. (Her own wrists, not the chickie's.) A couple of years later she ran away from home. I think she moved to Miami and became a stripper. Anybody who wants to tell me growing up as an Adventist was a bowl of cherries or being adopted is a blessing doesn't know all the horror stories I know. Don't even ask how many years I was in therapy!

I've strayed a bit from the topic here. My point, I think, was our view of life as children. Boston is in love with all the little girls. My friend, Keith, also has a seven-year-old son who is at the same place. These little darlings have wonderful mothers and fathers with terrific marriages. There's no divorce in their lives. They believe their lives will involve dating some sweet young thing, falling in love with her, marrying her at the appropriate age, having two to four healthy, smart, well-adjusted children, getting an education that qualifies them for a good job, from which they'll never get laid off. They'll buy a nice house, which they'll never lose. The country will never run out of water. Gas will never cost $5 per gallon. We'll never again go to war. And so on.

The great American dream.

May Boston and Ridley and all their friends and all your children and grandchildren grow up to live it.