Escape Maneuver #3

In my adult life I've been single for a embarrassingly short period of time, I'm not even putting it here because it probably would result in the loss of my feminist card.  While it would probably make me a more rounded person to have spent more time on my own I just can't see the point in walking away from someone who not only makes me smile, laugh and feel safe and happy, but who I also happen to love incredibly.  Can you get that lucky more than once?  I'm not willing to risk it so I'll just have to find another way to become well rounded I guess.  So while my stint as Single and Ready to Mingle was brief, it did yield some of THE BEST stories that I've got.

You can go into a blind date situation without an escape route but that's just not a bad path, it's the Misty Mountain path of paths through dating; there's nothing but goblins and orks waiting on it.  If you are like me then you would most likely assume that your friends can be trusted to match you up with someone  with basic personal hygiene and interests that reside in the same planet as yours.  There is a very good chance that you would be wrong in this assumption.  Enter, Small Hands Super Conservative Guy and Blind Date Escape Maneuver #3.  All you need to do it lay some groundwork and carry a pager.

Small Hands Super Conservative Guy had small hands. Not only did he have small hands but he was super conservative and  he practiced false personal advertising.  I have no problem with a little extra lovin', what I DO have a problem with is providing someone with a 10 year old picture when a picture is all we have to go on.  I'm all about best foot forward but come on, it's not like I'm not going to notice that you're a solid decade later than your picture - you might as well be up front about it.  I like to think that I'm not so shallow as to let some love handles and insecurity keep from knowing someone but the small hands...well those were just plain weird.  We're talking doll hands, teeeny, tiny little hands with a creepy limp handshake and a habit of over gesticulating when he talked.  Can't.  Stop.  Staring. At. The.  Hands.  So there I sit, staring at the hands.  Can't stop staring at the hands.  They're just so...small.  Through the haze of small hand preoccupation I hear the words, "Sarah Palin, wow, she's got it ALL figured out." I am no longer staring at the hands because my mind is now entirely consumed with insane gratitude for the alarm on my pager that is about to go off. 

The alarm on my pager is set and when it goes off, it sounds just like a page.  He knows I work in a hospital, he knows I work with cancer patients and all of this sounds VERY important.  What he doesn't know is that I'm so not that important.  So the pager goes off  and you say, "excuse me, this is my boss, I'll be right back."  One imaginary phone call and one made up work emergency later and you are out of there reasonably clean.  Sure it takes a little bit of planning but isn't it better than having a 'friend' call with an 'emergency?' 

Escape Maneuver #3.  Works every time.  And when I say every time?  I mean once but still...I find myself to be brilliant. ;)