Girl With a Twist Meets Dr. Awesome

It's only been a month or so since Girl With a Twist hit match.com, but I'm ready to admit it: I STINK, at online dating. With a real, rotting-carcass-in-the-chimney kind of stink.

I truly did join match.com with a new, "just say yes" mindset, which so far has led to encounters such as:

DUDE169: u have a really gr8 profile. i luuuv ur pics. do u like my pics?

Girl With a Twist: Thanks. Your profile was, um, out of the ordinary. And that was a very different profile picture. Not too many guys can take their own picture while driving a golf ball. Did that hurt?

DUDE: nah. but i went to the doctor after taking the bench pressing pic. it was worth it..... i look awesome

Girl: Yes, Dr. Awesome, that is quite a photo. #26, I think.

DUDE: nah, 26 thru 31 show me dressed up looking hot with my wife. uh, my ex-wife, i mean. wanna hook up at the gym? u could spot me. then i could show u more pics.

Girl: Oops, the toilet is overflowing. Gotta run.....!

Now, I am all for healthy egos. I love them. My irrepressible nine-year-old nephew - the REAL Dr. Awesome - has one that keeps me laughing, and loving him for his sheer joy at being. But that is something that can only be appreciated "live"......truly, nine-year-old Dr. Awesome just wouldn't translate as well in two dimensions as he does in your face. So for someone like me, who needs to see it, touch it, smell it (the guy, not the carcass) before dating it, online matching is about as appealing as pulling 23 ticks from a large, squirmy, long-haired dog. As drama-and-diva-free as I hope I am, it's just way too easy for me to shut-down a two-dimensional opportunity over something trivial. Like 43 self-shot vanity photos.

So stinking at this is actually okay, because over the last month I've had a lot of laughs - mostly at myself - and I've reconnected with my dating mojo. And if even a small percentage of the men online are legitimately single, then I've also learned that there are many more available men in Southwestern Pennsylvania than there are black bears. Which until recently I wouldn't have thought.

Which brings me to....meeting Dr. Awesome. My match. The adult version. I haven't met him yet, but I'm pretty sure it's not going to happen online. Which means Girl With a Twist needs to take the new, open, "just say yes" attitude on the road. Single friends have been alerted, and are maybe a little alarmed. I mean, it's been a long time since any of us have undertaken a targeted, let's-meet-Dr. Awesome mission.

But this might be a little bit different than my friends expect. The Dr. A roadtrip doesn't mean going to every happy hour and saying yes! to anyone who buys me a chardonnay. None of us want to become the newest Texts From Last Night girl.

So I guess the heart of this is....paying attention. A whole lot more. To the encounters I have in the running store, and while volunteering, and at the Home Depot, and yes....while out to drinks or dinners or activities with my friends and family. Maybe that will help me really see the authentic things I can wholeheartedly connect with, instead of discarding opportunities because they don't fit my tiny little framework.

Girl With a Twist is ready. Are you, Dr. Awesome?

Girl, With a Twist

Timeout! It's such a simple concept, with so many applications. Some of my friends have used it with variable success to discipline their kids, though I always felt awful when Thomas the Tank engine and his friends were put into timeout instead of the little boy who'd just used Percy to whack his little sister between the eyes. TV timeouts are another debatable thing. And I don't know anyone who loves that the last two minutes of some college basketball games can take foreeeeeever to go by, thanks to team timeouts every possession or two.

I really shouldn't bitch about very very, long timeouts, since I'm just finishing one. I started a dating timeout last July after a promising relationship ended. I haven't counted days (I'm saving that for the end of this five-month vacation), but that's a seven month-plus break from any sort of me+guy-in-a-relationship effort.

It might've started - the little dating seed in my head - when an online scholarship search got me so frustrated that I almost went to confession after dropping the F-bomb about 37 times a minute for the better part of an afternoon. Those search results were sooooo imbecilic, all I could think was that even a dating website could produce more actionable results than the scholarship folks. So I did a match.com search, and confirmed that scholarship-matching sites should just stop trying to connect left-handed guys named McGillen with southwestern community colleges offering duck-calling grants to right-handed people of British royal descent. It's just not gonna happen.

But online matching? That, most definitely, can. At least I can add to match.com's forced inputs by writing a respectable "in my own words" introduction. So I visited match.com and, a "Girl With a Twist" was born. Or, unleashed. About two weeks ago.

This time, I made a commitment to be much more open-minded about the possibilities. That means respecting where my potential matches are coming from, and no passing up men because they're shorter than 5'10, older than 49, occasionally misspell words, or have unfortunate screen names such as "LOoking4U", "How4everFeels" (um, endless?), and, "DUDE".

I wish I could say I've honored the promise but so far, I've said "no thanks" to an earnest Emerson-quoting 57-year-old retiree in D.C., an excitable gentleman who added an "!!" to the end of every phrase, a 5'9" atheist who took a little issue with my spirituality and humor, and, others. For varying slightly picky but completely defensible reasons (honest, Mom). I just honestly can't see myself eventually meeting a guy who last read a book during President Reagan's first term, or only eats white foods. I mean....a girl's gotta read, and gotta eat. A lot.

So maybe a little compromise is in order now. I should look, I should learn, I should respond, but I should not pretend that tattooed free-spirited road-trippin' "DUDE" is really going to be interested in my career change, or that my heart will be captured by a man who has the edge of Winnie the Pooh.

I am a Girl With a Twist. So help me God.