AAAAND... SCENE

A few months ago I was on a conference call buried in paperwork (read: fucking around on Facebook) when I noticed that I had a friend request from some random dude. I normally don't accept them from people I don't know, but when I checked our mutual friends I realized that he was the guy who my friend had wanted to set me up with a while ago. I remembered that it didn't really pan out because the conversation went something like this:

Friend (who will not be getting a holiday card from me this year): "Remember when you stopped by my office the other day? One of the guys there thought you were hot and I told him you were single."

Me: "Uh, thanks for checking with me. How old is he?"

Friend: "I think, like, 30."

Me: "OK, what's he like?"

Friend: "Well, he goes to the gym."

Me: "OK, and?"

Friend: "Well, I don't really know him that well."

Me: "Does he have illegitimate kids and/or a criminal record?"

Friend: "I don't think so."

Me: "Sounds comforting. Alright, what the hell. You have to double with us, though. And I'm bringing Mace."

Luckily, this charming potential Casanova never came calling, so I forgot all about him, until that intriguing friend request. I accepted it and perused his profile to get a better handle on this guy.

His profile scared the crap out of me- he was more Jersey Shore than The Situation and Snookie combined. All his "pages" on Facebook were about living in our town, being Italian and gangster, and watching wrestling. My brother used to watch wrestling, but that was when he was six. Dude also had no pictures. He knew what I looked like- that was an unfair advantage. I didn't agree to biological warfare.

The next day he got me on Facebook chat, saying that he saw me when I came into his office once and asked my friend about me. He seemed kind of cool, but his grammar, typing and spelling were atrocious- using commas instead of periods, incorrect letters and words, etc. I wondered whether this guy even graduated high school. College, of course, was out of the question.

Over the course of a couple of weeks, I talked to Brainy Smurf some more, trying to ignore his appalling abuse of the English language. It turned out that we both loved 80's music, so he started bombarding my inbox with Youtube clips of videos. One was cool, two was enough, ten was stalker lite. He was obsessed with Van Halen and wouldn't shut the fuck up about them, even when I said that I wasn't that big of a fan.

In one specific conversation, he told me he had to pull out his old guitar and start playing again- he was really "graving it."

Oh, God. Oh dear, dear God. THIS is who my friend wanted me to end up with? I was insulted. I mean, I know I'm in my twenties, and single, and my clock technically should be ticking at this point, but come on. I'm not THAT old. I'll stay single, thanks.

After that the red flags just kept on coming, and I realized our lifespan together truly was somewhere in the vicinity of the next ten minutes. Each one was a bigger shitbomb than the last:



A) He looked like Daughtry (This came on the heels of when I asked him why he had no pictures on Facebook. He explained that it was because he "didn't have a Webcam." Later, I told all this to a friend at work, and he gave me a weird look and told me that Daughtry is the bald guy from American Idol.)

B) He had a cat

C) He never went out during the week (I have a job that almost always requires me to be out of town on the weekends)

D) He had no local friends

E) HE LIVED WITH HIS MOTHER



I'd already mentally deleted Brainy Smurf from my life and was trying to contemplate a polite way to let him know. We'd been going back and forth on Facebook chat for two months, and I wasn't down with this E-Harmony bullshit. He also had the incredibly annoying habit of calling me (he'd already gotten my number from my friend, unfortunately) at 10:00 every Friday and Saturday night to invite me to go out, regardless of the fact that I would tell him every week that I wasn't available, and that he had to let me know in advance. His excuse? "I had to help out my mom." Every time. Was she sick? Crippled? A cult leader? No- she had a sore shoulder. Even my mom, who's in mini-grandbabies mode, was horrified at the concept of my going on one date with this guy.

Imagine if I wound up dating him, and I had to sit around all night every night waiting for him to finish catering to Mommy? I vote no. Also, he sounded gay on the phone. Cut! That's a wrap.



Because this guy has more than lived up to his "Brainy Smurf" nickname, I've decided to just ignore him until he gets the hint, sometime in the next twenty years. I've never actually spoken to him on the phone (I always send him to voice mail), and we've never gone out, so technically I don't owe him shit. I am going to put out a hit on my friend, though.

PS- for an even more hysterical disaster of a date, check out my friend Annabelle's blog. The two of us should form a club.