The last time I went on a blind date I was 16 years old and stuck at a dinner table with a sweet young boy who scared me to death. Not that he was mean, or scary looking, or at all disagreeable--actually he was really nice. But he was a boy, and I was scared stiff of boys; I didn't understand them, I was raised with older sisters--heck, at that age, I'd never even kissed a boy!

The only reason I was there at all is because my well-meaning father "suggested" I accept when he and my mother's good friends' young son asked me out to dinner. Of course I said no--what, and actually sit there and talk?--and eat, what was I supposed to eat when my stomach was in nervous knots? How can I eat near a boy? But I was told I should go, that it was "just dinner", so I reluctantly accepted.

My conversation was halted and nervous; anything he asked I answered quickly and in childishly fast sentences. My stomach sick, I was nervous as a cat; (for the life of me I don't know what I thought would happen. Like he would jump across the table and smother me in a Tango embrace?)

I mumbled my way through dinner, was almost obnoxious in my conversation in that I made it perfectly clear this was a "friendly date only" (meaning no K-I-S-S-I-N-G). I think he finally got sick of me because he snapped back, "would you rather go home?" I went silent after that, barely picked at my chicken cordon bleu, and got out of there as fast as possible (meaning I didn't order dessert--unheard of for me, with all that chocolate on the menu.)

Obviously, we never went out on another date again.

I was channeling that crazy evening this week when I went out on a new event occuring in my married-with-children-trying-to-make-new-professional-connections life: The Facebook Blind Date.

Unlike my above rendered miserable experience of my youth, this blind date had nothing to do with romance. It was actually a meeting between someone I'd met professionally on Facebook but whom I'd never actually met. We'd exchanged a few emails and decided to get together for coffee this week while I was visiting her neck of the woods. And as I readied for the meeting, putting on make-up, I got this feeling that I was going on a kind of crazy platonic techonolgy-created get-together that had all the makings of a blind date--without the boy.

I kept looking at myself in the mirror and wondering, do I even look like my picture on Facebook? I have some really good lighting in that shot--this woman might not even recognize me. Oh stop, the other self inside said, the one who lost her hair 5 years ago and watched her skin turn gray with chemotherapy; for Heaven's sake, go meet the woman. Who cares? Just get out there and be seen.

So I did; I met this woman and we hit it off; we had lattes and talked shop, she told me about her family and I shared some stories about mine. She recognized me (maybe that photo's lighting wasn't too far off after all) and we spent an hour connecting in a way that email--Facebook or otherwise-- won't allow. I felt like I'd known this woman before and I was thrilled that a social networking tool like Facebook was actually working for me; I was meeting cool people through it in ways I'd read might happen. Hot damn.

So, sorry Dad. That first blind date was a bonified failure; but 3 decades, several careers, a husband, 2 kids and a world of cyber-social networking at my fingertips, I have found a new successful blind-date-kind-of-way to meet new people and make connections.

And I didn't have to skip dessert to do it.