The Pink Slip

What causes bad relationships?

Bad dates? Forced conversation? Being set-up?

I've been on some bad dates, struggled through forced conversation and have relentlessly told everyone I know not to set me up on dates. And yet I've still had bad relationships.

It's been a little over two years since my last relationship. And I've just been doing my thing. Someone will come along, right?

Aside from the fact that the majority of men who come into my workplace are either married or seriously dating someone, I have met zero eligible bachelors. It could be because they all think I'm jail bait because I don't look over the age of 18.

And then yesterday something that's never happened to me before happened.

It's just been mostly me, the Boss and the Boss Lady at work this past week since Management went to have his surgery. So if it get busy, we are all busy.  I typically lose blocks of time when I sit down with customers, and the same was true yesterday.

I was with a lady helping her make her shoe choices and talking about what her PT said. Once I was done, I noticed the Boss Lady had taken a phone message for me. She wrote it down on one of those pink message slips.

Y'all, I've never had someone call and ask for me before, unless you count my mom and her running friends.

I assumed it was a customer calling me with questions. But I didn't recognize the name, and Boss Lady wrote that his mother got my card and told him to give me a call.

So my thought process goes to I must have fit his mom for shoes or talked to her about one of the training programs, and that's how she got my card.

I called him back. Left a message explaining that I was returning his call. Please call me back if he has any questions.

The whole thing was just kinda weird.

So I head back to Boss Lady's office and ask her about the pink slip.

She laughs before she says anything, and then she tells me when she was taking the message she asked what his call was regarding. She said he got really embarrassed when he had to explain.

He said his mother met me at the store one day. I gave her my card, which I don't remember doing yet it's something I would do. She, then, gave my card to her son and told him to "call" me. As in, not about shoes.

Who does that?

My friend Denise pointed out a major red flag.

His mother told him to call me....and then he actually did call me.

Seriously, I can't make this up. This is actually my real life.

Thankfully, he hasn't returned my call because I don't have any idea what I would say to him.

I mean he should have gently stalked me before calling. Like came up the store and made it seem like a chance meeting. That's what I would have done had my mom told me there was a hottie at some store she went to. (Does that make me a bad person?)

Tell Me This Didn't Just Happen Thursday

So today we are going to do this old school. And by old school I mean story telling with minimal photos.

You may have read yesterday about the late night weekend with the d-baggish guy and the detrimental phone number exchange...So I thought I'd give you the 411 on what happened and why I am doomed in the dating world. 23 and doomed. Yep.

During and after the Dark Days, I didn't want to date anyone because I didn't trust anyone. But as we all know time heals all wounds.

A little over a year ago, I accepted an invitation for a coffee date with a boy who was mutual friends with some of my guy friends.

Now let me clarify something before we get too far along, I like guys who have a sense of humor, however, I need to have some kind of spark that is the physical attraction. And that spark is few and far between, and I did not have it with coffee date boy, but I thought I'd be open-minded and try something new.

Well I was bored the whole time, and what happens when I get bored is my sarcasm makes a big appearance. And coffee date boy thought I was funny. So he laughed at me. With gray, brown teeth. How can this be made up?

Clean mouths are very important to me. Personal hygiene is very important to me. This point comes into play when he stretched his arms over his head to reveal pit stains. So needless to say, coffee date boy and I had no more coffee dates or any dates for that matter.

After this incident, I think I was a little bit scarred. And terrified. Dating is simply terrifying in its own right, but when the date is bad, it takes things to a whole new level.

Case in point: Last Saturday night. I met up with some friends to go downtown for some drinks. At the bar, I kept running into this guy. I didn't know him, but he looked friendly and inviting.

After the 65th time of me being shoved into him by drunken crazies, he asked me to dance. So I said yes. Again trying to be open-minded and nice.

We didn't really dance. We just stood on the dance floor yelling get-to-know-each-other words. He didn't try to feel me up. He didn't say anything stupid. He looked clean. Had a clean mouth. We had some like interests. 26.

I thought hmmmm.....What's the catch? There didn't seem to be one. So when he asked for my phone number, I didn't feel threatened or creeped out so I gave it to him. Then my friends and I left the bar.

***I need to make a point to say that I never give my number out in bars. And it will NEVER EVER happen again.***

Kid blew my phone up from the time I left the bar until 5 A.M. when I got home. He called me once while I was still out and about with my friends. Then he called me again when I said I was going to bed. When I answered, he told me he had "waited up on me" so that he could talk to me when I got home.

The next day, he started blowing my phone up with text messages. He asked me to hang out with him, but I told him I had plans, which was true. And then the questions started.

What do you like to do? Where are you from? Can you cook? Are you a Christian? Where do you live? Where did you eat dinner tonight? Are you still with your friends?

In the midst of his Q&A, I learned that he had been married and divorced. Not a big deal. It was not something I was going to hold against him. Everyone has a past.

But as the day wore on, I kept feeling like all his questions were sizing me up to be his next wife. NOT COOL. By 8 P.M. that night, I was overwhelmed and a tad bit freaked out. The questions kept getting more and more personal. Like...Do you see this turning into something?

He also told me everything he was doing and all the places he was going, and he felt that I should tell him the same. Now that is a violation of my personal space. I don't have to tell anyone who I'm with or what I'm doing or when I get home. That is the independent Aquarius coming out in me.

I told him I thought his expectations were way too high too soon. He didn't understand. Then I had to tell him that it wasn't going to work for me. After begging me multiple times to give him another chance, he gave up. It was the first time my phone was quiet in 24 hours.

I thought I was in the clear. Until yesterday....

I was at work getting ready to do an interview. And this conversation happens.

Boy: Wanna go to Bonefish tonight?

Me: No thank you!

Boy: Just thought I'd try, truth is I'm desperate for attention... I'm not over my ex-wife.

Boy (20 minutes later): You seem like a great girl, I'm sorry and I'm gonna try to be normal again.

After he basically slapped me in the face with his being desperate for attention bit, I knew my decision to cut things off was the right thing to do. And what the H did he mean by going to try to be normal again? If he was normal to begin with, I wouldn't have been so turned off.

What I've learned: I don't like boys who are Stage 5 Clingers. I don't like boys who ask me 4987984979 questions that get more and more personal. I will NEVER EVER give my phone number out in a bar no matter how normal the guy may seem. I don't want a guy to give me a play-by-play of what they are doing all the time. I don't want to be sized up as a wife replacement.

This is what I want:

I want to laugh until it hurts. I want to do things together, but still do things with as independent people. I am terrified to lose myself in another person, to lose my individuality. I want us to be equals and support each other. I want him to WANT to surprise me, take me on dates, make silly cards, help me make tough decisions.

I want him to understand that I have a tendency to stress cry, chew my fingernails, be grossed out by feet, make stuff up when I don't know the exact answer, use massive amounts of sarcasm, talk in my sleep, leave a trail of hair on the bathroom floor, become enthralled by skanky romance novels AND the Tudor era, and build extravagant mountains out of trash before I get tired of letting it teeter and take it to the dumpster.

I want to be loved beyond my flaws and told so. And know that it's ok to be myself. No matter how weird that may be.

Is that too much? I like to think not....And I'm not settling for less.