NB: I did ask my pal if it was OK to post the following. So if you’re a real-life friend of mine, it’s safe to email me with your woes. I won’t just put them RIGHT UP ON THE INTERWEBS. Ahem.

As most of you know, I love social networking. At any given time, I’m an active member of at least three different sites, by which I mean that I check them regularly and actually use them to stalk people, instead of just leaving them out there as dead internets-real estate. (Although I’ve got plenty of those accounts too.)

Anyway, right now I’m mostly on teh facebook, because that’s that has scrabulous and because I like to see people’s statuses change. It’s so helpful to be informed that your friend “is going to kill her friend Jen” or “would like to buy a drink for a struggling writer” before contacting them. (Neither one of those statuses have happened yet, but there’s always time.)

Recently, I check my facebook and discovered that a friend of mine from high school, we’ll call her Jane, had logged in and changed her status to the following:

“Jane is horrified at the idea of having to date again. Ugh.”

Well. Something you might not know about me is that I like to help. I like to help a lot. I immediately wrote to Jane:

Subject line: Dating

Message: Is disgusting. It’s my least favorite. In my perfect world, it would go like this: I would go out and get drunk with fun people until love descended from above. This is called college, sadly, and is hard to recreate.

Anyway, sending well wishes your way.

Jane replied:

You’re a sweetheart! Thanks for the well wishes. My college experience was more along the lines of getting drunk with fun people, then discovering them in my bed the next morning and desperately trying to remember what their names were while frantically searching for my bra amongst the sheets. Love descended from above far less frequently than hangovers. Ah, the good old days…

But dating, alas, is even less fun. At least in college, when I was still desperately trying to prove I was straight, I felt like I was accomplishing something, you know? “Tally one more proof of heterosexuality,” while now my biggest dating accomplishment seems to be not chucking my drink in some lady’s face out of sheer boredom.

Le sigh… what’s your most recent bad date? I’ll tell you about the Cabbage Patch Nurse if you tell me yours 😉

Cabbage Patch Nurse? Who could resist? I wrote back:

Oooh, girl. Let’s see.

OK: One bad date. I met this social worker through Match.com. Sez I to myself, “Social worker! Surely he won’t be a sociopath like most guys I meet.” Sez my shrink to me, “Oh dear. You know, most of us are very odd. We couldn’t afford professional degrees and the amount of therapy we actually needed.”

Needless to say, the guy was creepy in a Green River Killer sort of way. He was very nervous, as if the drugs were taking hold, and spent A LOT of time talking about how he was a lapsed Catholic, and how hard it was, and how he would have become a priest, but he loved KEEES-ING and TOOOUCH-ING too much.

I swear it was all could do not to point out that his pervy mcpervs were not incompatible with the priesthood.

Anyway. Do tell me of the Cabbage Patch Nurse. Which should be the name of some artistic work or other, I tell you.

Jane replied:

I know, so hard to pick just one, isn’t it? Though that does sound like a doosie- should’ve checked with me before dating a social worker. I could have told you, from bitter experience, that none of them are just the Hairclub president, so to speak. Good thing he was so, um, tactile…it bodes so well for his future professionally, either in the priesthood or in therapy.

And now, the one, the only…. Cabbage Patch Nurse.

So I worked up my nerve, and went on a date with a friend of a friend’s friend. I met her for lunch, thinking it couldn’t be a long nightmare that way, if she turned out to be a member of the Manson family or something. Nope, she wasn’t: turns out she’s a nurse. She turned up, and I shit you not, she looked like my Cabbage Patch Kid, Blythe Marie. Same weirdly squished-but-doe-eyed face, hair in two braids…I kept resisting the urge to drop my napkin, to peek under the table and check if she had those scary dimpled knees like the doll, you know?

Little did I know, she had fiberfill for brains, just like my old doll. She babbled happily along about her ex and her coming out process, and I quietly munched my food, trying not to think about how I finally succeeded in giving the other Blythe Marie an appendectomy on my parents’ kitchen table, and tried not to wonder if that meant I was possibly the bigger loon at the table? Finally, just as I raised my cup of tea to my lips she says, flapping her eyelashes earnestly, “I don’t really know if I should vote in the next election, you know?…when is it, anyway, January? Besides, I think people have been really hard on Bush, don’t you? I mean, he’s really likable, in a bland sort of way?” (yes, she ended every clause she uttered with a big fat question mark)

I concentrated on swallowing my tea, and thought peaceful, calming thoughts until the check finally arrived. I kept thinking how this caring, well-meaning woman is a nurse, and handles drug dosages for patients. Heaven protect all the little old ladies in the home where she works.

Now I ask you, with that to think back on as my first dive into the dating scene in 6 years, is this really something I want to get back into???? Horror, I tell you, pure unadulterated horror!

Now, that, pals, is a bad date.