I never really considered myself to be relationship roadkill.   I’m a  self-confident, urban girl with a pretty good head on my shoulders, yet when I jumped into the dating wading pool, I only seemed to contract ringworm.  Maybe it’s just bad luck, but I think there are more powerful forces at play.  You see, I have had far more than my fair share of bad dates.  I date a few times a month, and all dates, for the past year anyways, have been first dates.  There are no second dates.  Please don’t get me wrong— not all unsuccessful dates are bad dates.  Sometimes the chemistry just isn’t there.  Sometimes, a root canal just may be a little more interesting, but dull and pain do not a bad date make.  There just seem to be a whole lot of just plain bizarre, strange and disastrous people around this city, and I seem to be enormously talented in finding them to date.

So now I’m on a mission.  I thought that all of these set -backs would turn me off dating forever.  Instead, I am determined to find out if this dating thing is indeed a worthwhile use of my otherwise limited free time.  In the meantime, I get some pretty funny stories out of the deal, and the occasional free drink.  I’m not trying to have 50 bad dates.  Heck, I’m not even trying to date 50 different guys (although between you and me and the lamppost, the number is getting up there….).  I just wonder how many frogs I will end up kissing until I meet a prince.  Heck, even a Duke or an Earl or something.  I’m just stuck in a rut of some kind in which unsuccessful date falls after unsuccessful date and I’m left holding the shrapnel and wondering who the hell let these people out of the house.  Or what their parents are like to create such unusual offspring.

Along the way I might be able to answer some of the eternal dating questions that continue to haunt me:

• What is more important—What you like or what you are like?
• When people say they are looking for someone witty, intelligent and easy-going, are they really?
• Is there really such a thing as a good first date, or are they always plagued by awkwardness and discomfort?
• Is it actually me that makes all these dates go haywire?  (Nah… Nevermind)

So here we go.  The dates start in Spring 2003, and continue forth.  The research might be worth it.  I meet people everywhere—online, work, school, through friends, in bars.  There’s no harm in a date.  And after all, there’s no harm in meeting new people, unless you’re one of my 50 Bad Dates.