There’s a game I subconsciously play in my head. It sounds a lot like “Marco! Polo!” but instead it is a guy yelling, “Broken!” and me yelling, “Pick me!” It isn’t quite as much fun since there is no swimming pool and there are usually tears at the end. Mine or his depending on the final outcome. Not only is my Picker broken but it is also finely honed to pick broken people. The more you have wrong with you, the more likely I will want to fix you. I can’t understand where this need comes from. I was raised in a very loving family. Cigarette butts weren’t put out on my legs. I wasn’t left at school more than a couple of times.

Another element to this picking is similar to Pinball. I am the ball and I go from one paddle to the next, dating people based on attributes that the last one didn’t have. His best trait was that he was an asshole? I will find someone nice. He had no ambition? The next one does! Life was too serious? I will find someone FUN! He wasn’t very smart? This one is MENSA level. And then because you can’t really choose someone based on one attribute the game tilts.  Like Pinball, it is fun at the beginning but by the end it is just noisy and annoying.

With online dating this whole exercise just gets harder because I can only base it on a picture and a few sentences.  The funny thing is that even with only this amount of information I will still find the broken ones.  The last exchange I had with someone on Bumble started off pretty well.  He was funny, had a good job and didn’t seem to take life too seriously.  However, shortly after Kim Jong Un started launching nuclear missiles, he sent me a message saying, “Welp, we are all going to die, want to make out?”  Don’t be jealous.  I am sure there are plenty more like him out there.

I feel like my gauge is so far off that I can’t trust what I think anymore.  My new plan of attack is that every time I meet a new person who I think is dateable I will set-up a group date with at least 4 of my friends.  I will give them all a survey and they can hand it back to me at the end.  Or maybe to make it a little less weird for the guy, I can ask my local police station if I can borrow one of their interview rooms with the two way glass so my friends can see and hear all of the exchanges.  That would be totally normal wouldn’t it?

In the meantime I am going to adopt 5 more cats and buy one of those “Hang in There” kitten posters.