Pollyanna meets Midland St.

To say that I was unprepared for dating after Brad would be a gross understatement. Every unscrupulous man in the bar that was worth his salt had me pegged as an easy target the minute I stepped into the building. Maybe the minute I stepped out of my car actually. The root of my dating hilarity is all because of this. Half my dating after divorce stories wouldn't even be funny if I were a typical jaded barhopper instead of the starry eyed optimist that I was - and let's be honest - mostly still am.

Here's the background. To begin with, I was the oldest child of an extremely protective household. Other kids in high school had curfews - I didn't go out. I didn't party, I didn't drink, I didn't date. That does sound like my parents locked me in a dungeon, but in reality I was just cocooned from many things that other kids experienced in high school. (Thanks Mom by the way. I DO appreciate it now that I am older and fully intend to torment my own children in exactly the same way one day) BUT....this did not make me a very informed dating diva.

Act Two: I meet Brad my senior year. We fall in passionate teenage love. You know, the kind where you think if you don't see each other every day you will literally die. Simply stop breathing if you can't breathe the same pocket of air. Every teenage cliche? Completely true. We were so silly sometimes. I remember standing in front of my parents house next to his dad's truck one night when he dropped me home. We were crying (oh yeah...brad too...he was a weeper at one point before he went AWOL ) and we were crying because - get this - basketball season was starting. Yup. Because with his practices, we wouldn't be able to see each other every single night and we were worried as to how we would ever make it through. Well, we did survive basketball. Just not waitresses and hormones.(that was slightly snide but it made me giggle a little so I'm leaving it in) So Act Two ends with me falling in love with my first real boyfriend right out of high school.

Fast forward five years and we are dodging rice hand in hand as we run to the limo. Actually, you can't throw rice at weddings anymore, did you know that? Apparently it's bad for the environment. (Isn't it a plant? How can this even be really? ) I just used that first line to paint a typical wedding picture so you knew where I was going. In reality we walked pretty slowly to the stretch expedition that Brad insisted on having because he wanted to use his cane. (yup, cane...complete with top hat AND white gloves....see what a good wife I was?) Anyway...way off tangent here. The point of this is that I married my highschool sweetheart and pretty much avoided the entire dating circuit and barhopping initiations. When everyone else my age was figuring out where their limits were and how to step over them, I was setting up my 401K and making mortgage payments. (Although to be fair, Brad was in charge of that since I am pretty much awful when it comes to managing my money)
Add into this mix the fact that I am, at heart, the kind of person that wants to believe the best about everyone - and you can imagine the experiences that I had when I finally took my first steps on the dating scene. But you don't have to! Because I am going to tell you most of them eventually! Lucky you!

The person that had to have enjoyed these first few weeks the most must have been my sister, Emily. It really must have been somewhat like watching a toddler play in traffic when we first started going out. A toddler that was slugging on Jack, of course, because that's how Polish toddlers roll. I remember my first inkling that this may not be the spot for placing unearned trust. Emily and I had been dancing at Westtown in Bay City - and we had met a handful of men towards the end of the night. Last call came around and these guys kept talking about after parties and I was all for it. Because at this point in time, my only goal was to put off going to sleep until I just fell over exhausted so I could mark one more day off my calender. So I offered up my house and started talking about playing cards....now, I meant play cards. Euchre, smear, go fish... They thought I meant "play cards", so there was understandably some confusion when we all ended up back at my house and the night didn't end the way that they had imagined. To this day I still am not sure if Emily was aware of the misconception all along and just enjoying my Pollyanna outlook and the guys reactions. Needless to say, I learned fairly quickly to be extremely specific in my conversations from that point on.

I would like to say that this was the first and last time that I was naive and trusting of the wrong people, but then I wouldn't have more stories to share later, would I? While my outlook did get me into situations that could have turned out better, that is part of who I am. I wouldn't change it if I could. The difference now is that I acknowledge that there is a way a situation could go bad - but the Pollyanna in me is still rooting for the happier ending.