Pointy Things Not On Rob's Head.

Once bitten twice shy. It's not just a classic Great White CD, it's a classic cliché too. And who knew that the words "Classic" and "Great White" would ever be used in the same sentence? I'm sure Jack Russell did. Maybe his little dog too…

Yeah, see what I did there? Lead singer, name of terrier? Sigh, what a waste of a classic joke. At least I didn't mention their classic nightclub fire and Great White S'more fest. Sheesh, no sense of humor.

And that's one of the first keys to dating after divorce: a sense of humor. At least for me. If you don't have one, you might as well just stay home, cuz I'm gonna be funny. Oh, it may not be intentional, but sometime after I Chevy Chase flop onto the restaurant tile or accidentally make fun of the waitress who's standing behind me with a tray of pasta, something funny is gonna happen and I'm gonna laugh. You should too. Otherwise it's gonna be a long night--for both of us.

Dating isn't only about laughing, it's about weeding. I hate weeding. It's yanking the dandelions and fertilizing the roses--or is that backwards for dating? Anyway, you get the idea. There are similarities. It's a garden thing.

We all have gardens. Even those of us who don't know what to do with the silly things. I have a flower bed that was filled when MyEx and I bought this house. I don't know anything about gardening, neither did MyEx. The previous owners liked cactus. I do know that. They were everywhere. If I liked cactus, I'd have stayed in Arizona. I left. I'm not fond. There's something I don't like. It must go.

That doesn't make all cactus bad. MyEx knew people at work who bled with a cactus love so deep that it hurt just to watch. So we didn't. We did invite them over to dig up their favorites though. They came, they saw, they took all but three and left a pint of blood. Perfect, I'd been left with the prickly trinity. Over Halloween I dress them up as ghosts, come Christmas I dress them up as Frosty. It's a little California humor, you don't get unless your thermometer never dips below 56 degrees.

See? It's fine if you don't have a sense of humor. Be as prickly as you want, you and I just won't date, that's all. Trust me, there are people who don't like me with sillier reasons.

"You remind me of this guy I stalked when I was 22. He sprayed me with mace."

Good to know.

See, it's all checks and balances in the dating garden. We all write checks that we hope nobody notices we have no intention of paying, while balancing who we are and who we think you want us to be. Dating is a fistful of roses.

I find that coming out of a marriage though, I do have certain advantages. Yeah, I've got this extra luggage that makes others think twice, but that's ok. Weak women need not apply. Shrinking Violet? Yeah, she's in my neighbors garden, not mine.

That's the other thing about divorce: I now have a much better understanding of what I want, and what I don't. I also have a willingness to hold out for what I want, because I've seen what happens when things go wrong.

The cactus garden explodes with tarantulas.

Ok, not literally but in a divorce, everything gets tilled into the dirt. You spend the first year just settling. It's not till a year later when things start to sprout, and some time after that, you might know what the heck you're looking at.

"uhm, what's that?"

"I have no idea, it's spiky and has a cool flower…"

"could be my next date…"

So now that I have a better understanding, everything becomes a weeding process. It's funny, Somebody wrote me a letter a few weeks back, about something they'd written, and I thought, "Hey, that's cool." On the other hand I talked to somebody else about music and my writing. They didn't even blink interest. She said something about a vegan restaurant and dandelions. It was my turn stare over her shoulder at the courtyard clock.

Vegan? That's a vegetarian on steroids--who's against the use of steroids. Go figure.

So I looked at my list, not into music, has no opinion on creative writing, and hasn't met a bull she'd like to bone. Nope, not for me.

NEXT!

And so it begins. Every meeting is decision: crab grass, or tiger lily? I know that the same thing happens to me. I'm fine with that. It makes my list shorter. "Must like Rob…"

I'd like to think of this as sword in the stone dating, You know, everybody trying, giving it their best pull--me being the sword of course--and the right valkyrie princess would lift me over her head with a fierce battle cry and we'd live happily ever after, but that's not how it works.

No, this is a Cinderella story and I'm the guy stuck smelling feet for the perfect fit.

"is that fungus on your big toe? Yeah, I'm pretty sure the shoe's too small. No really. It is I assure you."

It's a chorus line of bad choices, and I can't tell what I'm looking for without a little song and dance cuz that's what dating is. And of course the last really good date I had led to a bad divorce. What's that show for my track record? Once bitten…

Still, I'm not totally against being bitten. That's why I still have the three cacti. They make me sharp--or at least sharp enough to not grab at them. I'm sharp enough know what I'm looking for. I've got the shoe horn and I've planted lady slippers. Now all I have to do is wait for the right lady to fit.