Well let's exam that.   We've all heard of the expression that there is either feast or famine.  No truer saying than this applied to my personal "love" life a short while back.  I was having buzzard's luck trying to find a single male on this planet, and there was nothing dead and nothing dying.  Drought I tell you.  Drought.  No water for this thirsty feline.  Not even a hint of  prospects from my wide network of friends.  It was as if all the interesting available men had disappeared from the face of the earth like in some science fiction B-movie:  In the hush of night,  they were led away and placed on a space ship.  Destination?  Some unknown planet where single Baby Boomer women couldn't locate them, not even on their radar screens.   Feeling defeated, my exhausted Cupids laid down their arrows.   They were clueless, unable to complete the lyric,  "Oh where, oh where have all the single, ready, willing and able men gone?  Oh where or where can they be?"

Resigned to lunching with girl friends and splitting the bill, I decided to take the single road less traveled, which for me was  having a love affair with myself.  After all "1"  is a number too!  Just as I settled in to this mind set, my phone rang.  It was one of my retired Cupids who was whispering on the other end so her husband couldn't hear her.  "Girl", she said excitedly, "my husband is in the other room visiting with a friend who just happens to be single, ready, willing, and able.  And are you sitting down?  Well he's talking about wanting to meet you!"  I answered back, "Well give that bow and arrow to your hubby and tell him to fire!"   Just like that I was ready to take a detour from that less traveled road.  I really liked my girl friend's husband and deduced his friend just had to be as fabulous.  She asked if she could give this guy my phone number?    "Well of course.  Give him everything except my weight,"  I chuckled.    As soon as I hung up,  would you believe the phone rang again and this time it was one of my club members who was also a deputized Cupid.  She too had a prospective date for me:  a guy who was a patient of her husband.  She had run into him at her husband's dentist office and, after a brief chat, discovered that he was looking for a Cupid also.  If I gave her the okay, she was ready to set us up.  "Thanks bunches", I replied,  "but hold on until after I meet the guy that was a friend of Cupid #1's husband."  I felt giddy.  It was as if I had one in the hand and one in the bush.  Just as I hung up the phone it rang again.   Talk about lightening striking twice.  What about three times!   On the line was Cupid #3, another one of my club members.   She said her neighbor had mentioned my name  in conversation.  She said she was a little hesitant to go farther with it because she said he was so unlike the last love in my life whom I was still grieving over.  She had nice things to say about this guy.  I told her about the two previous calls and we agreed that I should check out those two men first and if I was not impressed she'd dust off her bow and arrow and let him have it.
 
 To make a too long story seem shorter...... we move now to the date.
  
He calls and we decide to go to a movie.  He picks the movie based on its title, "In The Bedroom."  Before we hang up,  he asks me what I like to drink?   I give him the name of my favorite inexpensive champagne.  When he comes to my door to pick me up,  he hands me a box of CVS chocolates and a discount coupon for my favorite inexpensive champagne.  I place this mentally in his deficit column.    He's a nice looking guy, well groomed, and shorter than my friend's short husband told me.   Another deficit check.  Then I erase it because I can't make a women's basketball team either.   At the movie theater, without checking with me he asks  for two senior tickets.  I joke that I'm not that old.   He doesn't get the joke.   Back goes that check.   At the refreshment stand,  he pulls out a coupon and orders one bag of popcorn and two Cokes.  I let him know that I don't drink Coke and would prefer water and my own bag of popcorn.  His reaction had "cheap" written all over it.  "Sorry,"  he says in earnest, "the coupon doesn't allow for substitutes."  All of a sudden he becomes a little shorter.  And I'm forced to add two more checks in the deficit column.  The movie is a very dark and rather disturbing drama.  It's well written and acted.  When we exit, he's speechless, But so am I and the other movie goers.  Except his reaction is for a different reason: "I don't get the title," he says with a puzzling gesture, "when were they ever in the bedroom?"  Okay, I thought, one down and two to go.

 

I couldn't wait to call Cupid #2.  She had mentioned that the guy she had in mind was good looking and affable too.  Well, if any one knows good looking it had to be her.  Her husband was at least 6'2" and very handsome.  Who would have ever thought that it really didn't bother me to go to the dentist office and have the dentist lean over and say "open wide."    She begins her hello by asking me about the date.  "Well, how did it go?" "Do you mean my date with Mr. Coupon," I snarled.  Then I mentioned his name.  "You've got to be kidding,"  she exclaimed, "that's the eligible bachelor I was going to introduce you to."  "Oh no," I said, "thanks but no thanks....been there done that.."  You've got the picture.  Immediately after hanging up and feeling an uncomfortable wave of desperation, I called Cupid #3 to ask about her neighbor who had been asking about me.  She sounded like she was waiting for my call.  "Well how did it go?"  Hadn't I just heard that question?  "So far, Mr. Right has been Mr. Wrong...twice," I answered with a frustrated tone.  "Would you believe that Cupid #2 wanted to introduce me to the same man and didn't even know it?"  "Really, what a coincidence," she said with a smile in her voice, "Well my neighbor Mr. X..." "Mr. Who? Did you say 'X?'  Is he...?" I began to describe him.  "So I guess you've already met him?" She remarked in disbelief.

 

All this began to sound like that old joke, "Who's on third?"  Or as I like to tell it, 1,2,3 strikes you're OUT!   So my friends beware.  Now I know the reason why someone always gets burned when there's three on a match.

 

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Written by Roscoe Dellums.