You're not getting any younger, I was telling myself a more than three years ago . I have a keen grasp of the obvious. I'm single again, a bittersweet moment to be sure. It's time to meet someone "compatible",  whatever the hell that means, I think.

Immediately I ruled out meeting someone at work. I was in management, and if I raised an eyebrow, hello unemployment  and sexual harrassment suit. Plus I worked in a very toxic place, and had just ended a toxic marriage. I had a friend in grad school who broke up after a long term relationship with a co-worker. It was ugly, very ugly.

I've dated before, there should be nothing to it...are you like, connected to reality, big guy? Let's use logic (big mistake) and try to rely on past experience. When did I date last?  Back in the late twentieth century. The early 1980s. Before cell phones, facebook, blogs, Match.com, eHarmony.com., and STD. My daughters describe the 80s as the ancient times.

Dating the old fashioned way meant you pick up meet women in bars or at dance clubs. Let's see, if I use this time honored practice  at my advancing years I'm probably to meet women who were born after I graduated from high school. Plus the music they play, it's just freaking noise now.

In my mind I could hear this Conversation in a bar or club:

ME: So where were you when Kennedy was shot?

Twenty something female : Ted Kennedy was shot? When? Where?

OR she says: By the way, you're, like ,way too old to be here. EWWW, I'm being hit on by my DAD. 

Ok, back to the drawing board. What about other ways I met women in my past. Well, there was the "Certs Encounter" at the art museum. That relationship only lasted a few months. Lightning is not likely to strike again there.

I could ask my friends to set me up. Oh yeah, that was really successful. That's how I met my ex-wife. Then before that there was the paralegal who announced on our first date that "all men think through their balls." My comeback of "just like all girls think through their boyfriends' wallets"  which set the tone for the rest of the evening.

The interesting thing on this date was that she  "said" she was a vegetarian. She wore a leather jacket, leather boots, had a huge leather handbag. Her car had a leather interior, too. I asked how this leather fetish (I used a more discreet word that I can't remember) squared with her lifestyle choice  to be a vegetarian.

She said, "Well they have to do something with the skins after the cows are slaughtered. You don't want them to go to waste."  We dated three more times. No, I don't know why, but I like a challenge.

Now these are my friends helping me. I should probably choose my friends more carefully. 

Before that my friends had another prospect. They were a tad vague about who she was and what she did. Hmmm, can you say witness protection program? So we met, and over drinks and dinner I finally asked, "So what do you?

She said, "I'm a minister." I heard her quite clearly but went quickly into denial. "What do you administer?" I asked.

"No, I am a Protestant minister. Didn't XXXXX tell you?"

"No, they said you were a delightful person, but didn't mention your, er job, uh occupation,  I mean vocation." Please God, make me invisible. When I could still see myself, I realized I was on the visiting team.

"Well, they probably didn't tell you because they thought if you knew you might not show up. It's happened before, more than once."

Insert writer's pregnant pause here:

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She was delightful and we dated. She had stronger feelings for me than I did for her and it ended soon after. Happy ending for her, she later got married and had a fabulous husband and lovely daughter.

Wait this is my blog, it's about me here. I crossed off  "fixed up by friends," because it still wasn't clear which friends I kept and and which friends my ex-wife kept after the divorce. You have to be really careful about that.

So here I stood at middle life, or "halfway to death" as my daughters  delightfully describe it, reflecting. You do a lot of reflecting when you're not dating. You also do a lot of something else, but that leads, allegedly, to prostate cancer. It's not easy to find a date if you're a man pushing 50.  Besides, I hear it's no picnic for women either. I may have to resort to technology. That was the solution, and it was a success. However it's also another post at another time.