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.