Posing As Normal© The Humor of Mary Tompsett

Speed-date survivor ........Yes, Mouseketeers, chat with a stranger for a paltry six minutes, and you too can resurrect your worst teenage dating angst. Without the pimples! At a recent “speed dating” event, this menopausal Baby Boomer rode the six-minute roller coaster and survived. Barely. ........The online site advises women to smell like cinnamon and to wear red, a “flattering and passionate” color. My brain hemispheres immediately squabble like kids in the back seat. Logical Left: Cinnamon? Sure. And I look great in red! Rebellious Right: Hmm. And what color says bra-burner of ’68? Left: Oh, like it’d kill you to look nice or chew a cinnamon stick. And so on. Maybe the voices qualify me for a group rate. ........The site prompts men to wear blue to show dependability. Hahahaha. No advice regarding their scent – I guess Dial is good enough. However, as a single homeowner who lusts for handymen, I vote for the aromas of sawdust and machine oil. Dependability? Show me a man wearing a tool belt, any color. And if he’s missing an eye or a finger from a nasty power tool accident – oh, Baby! ........My fantasy Mr. Right is a sensitive, New Age lumberjack who subscribes to Utney Reader and will rebuild my porch in exchange for a tarot card reading. But I’ll consider a Mr. Shares-the-Remote. Or even Mr. Speaks-in-Full-Sentences. ........I arrive at the restaurant and enter a candlelit room with tables for two. Thank God, it’s not fluorescent lighting. I still suffer flashbacks from the time I fled the Sears dressing room, shrieking to the clerk that my skin had been stolen and replaced with my grandmother’s. By candlelight I can look pretty good, though, especially across from a one-eyed amputee. ........We pin on name tags. I’ve pre-made mine, bearing a high school photo and the subliminal message, “Naked at Woodstock.” I arrange myself at a table and promptly snag my hair in the overhanging ficus. My first victim sits and launches a monologue, oblivious to falling twigs while I wrestle the tree. At last, the timer sounds. “You may begin!” cries the leader. Begin?? Ye gods, we’re not even on the clock yet!! So we slog through the small talk until, a year later, the timer rings again. Brushing away ficus leaves, we mark our scorecards and avoid eye contact until he bolts to the next table. ........Number Two is a silver-haired Ken doll. Reaching over the candle to shake his hand, I set my blue blazer on fire. (Note: blue = dependable and flammable.) I pat out the flame during his PowerPoint presentation on career achievements and financial goals. His silk shirt is pristine, while my sweat rings are the size of frisbees. He has all ten fingers. Damn. ........The next candidate is shy. Or, perhaps, raised by badgers. Desperate to bridge the grunts and shrugs, I regale him with a merry description of my tour of the “Body Worlds” cadaver exhibit. Big mistake, judging from his fetal position and mewling noises. Later I spot an eye patch on one of the paramedics wheeling him out, and my heart leaps! But a new partner walks up, wearing blue. Sigh. ........Details of the other gents blur due to oxygen deprivation. Holding one’s breath will do that. Looking back, they seemed like normal guys (except for badger boy) who skipped American Idol and braved six minutes with a woman who jitterbugged with a ficus, set herself on fire, and babbled on about being forever skinny as a plasticized corpse. ........Would I speed-date again? Perhaps, when the details fade. Given my short term memory issues, that will be soon. But I have hope. Somewhere out there is a man willing to put down his Feng Shui workbook, point his stub of an index finger at the warped paneling in my dining room, and whisper those three little magic words: “I’ll fix that.”