Three Sassy and Single Gals

There we are, Charlotte, Miranda, and I, sitting at a high top table at the hottest restaurant in town, awaiting the arrival of our cosmos. Don’t worry, Samantha’s not missing; this is a story of threes. Samantha’s spirit resides in all of us, but mostly in Miranda. Surprising, I know. She looks kind of like Miranda and has a lot of her greatest qualities: great work ethic, dry sense of humor, and lots of common sense, but to the core of her being, she is also Samantha-esqué. If we’re lucky, we all are. Samantha lives in the moment, embraces her sexuality, and goes after exactly what she wants in life.

Perhaps you have figured out by now, but that I’m not using real names, except for mine. Partly because I can’t remember most of the dates’ names. And partly because the fake names I am selecting have significant and/or silly meanings to me. Currently, I’m playing with the names from Sex and the City for my friends. I idolize Carrie, so in this vignette, I am her!!!. I mean, I am a writer, I have wildly curly hair, and I struggle with relationships too. Twins. On the other hand, she’s a good writer and gets paid to do it, she can rock the high heels, and she’s always got Big. Although, to be fair, some of my friends swear that one of my major flaws is that I try to keep for myself some form of Big. I interpret that to mean I hold on for too long. Whatever.

If you don’t get the Sex and the City reference, don’t worry, you don’t need it to understand the rest of the story.

So there we all were, not really in a swanky bar at all, but holding our wine glasses full of wine from a bag and sitting around on my scratched up leather couch, putting our feet up on the trunk/coffee table that “Nobody” kicked a hole in the side of. Odysseus pulled that crap and had Poseidon chasing him down for years. My kids have gotten off much easier as I do not have the energy or time of that trident wielding god of the sea, so I accepted that “Nobody” kicked my gorgeous piece of furniture and moved on…

We have seven kids between the three of us and one by one each of them would pop their head into the family room from time to time asking, “When’s dinner going to be ready?” We always responded with, “Five more minutes,” whether we have started the process or not. Sometimes the reaction was positive, “More time to play.” Sometimes the response was negative, “But mom, I’m starving.” But their appearance was almost always accompanied by something getting broken or spilled. Not a hot restaurant at at all but our warm and fuzzy dinner club.

All of us had currently conquered online dating and now had very little to no drama to discuss, so we ventured off for memory lane with some of our online dating favorite stories.

They each had been on many more first dates than me, so I will tell those…this may be a two parter. Dan and I don’t last, and I ultimately end up on many, many more first dates than them, but for now, we all blissfully considered ourselves taken. So this one is for you Charlotte and Maranda/Samantha. You know who you are!

Charlotte launches the journey down memory lane by asking, “Miranda, remember when you found Toby on match.com?” One night while I was sitting in my bed, reading one of my books selected specifically to make me smarter, Miranda called me, “You’re never gonna believe what just happened to me.” Turns out, she was scrolling through match.com profiles and came across Toby’s, Charlotte’s husband. I don’t say ‘ex-husband’ because they were not divorced yet. In fact, they were making a go at it, trying to salvage their hopefully not wrecked marriage. Or at least Charlotte thought they were. Miranda asks, “Do I tell Charlotte?” Collectively we decided that we have to. So we did. Charlotte and Toby spent the next couple of days arguing and making up and arguing and making up. Maybe that process sounds familiar. But the end result was Toby on the phone with match.com’s customer service from India, for hours, trying to get his profile deleted. Trying to prove to Charlotte that he was committed. One might wonder, “Why was he on there in the first place?” But anyway, Charlotte noticed that he was getting progressively more panicked and rushed while on the call. Turns out he was getting frustrated and impatient because, truth be told, he had a 7 PM date that he had to meet. And now Charlotte is divorced as well.

So Miranda and Charlotte were now both on match.com. They reminisced about hours spent on the couch, each with their laptops or iPads in hand, scrolling through and comparing notes.

“Hey, have you noticed Frederick8021?”

“Yes, as a matter fact I’ve been talking to him quite a bit and we have a date next week.”

“Damnit, I think he’s cute.”

“Hey. What do you think of Ilovetheoutdoors? He looks like he has some interests in common with you.”

“Ok, oh there he is. Sure, I will send him a message. Oh by the way, did you ever hear from sliverofhope?”

“Yea, his screen name is ironic because he was such a downer. Delete. What about secondchance?”

“Turns out he is still with his wife. Secondchance for her…”

“I think hotterthanhell is pretty cute. Oh goodness, so does he. Delete.”

“What about lotsoflove? Don’t you think he is adorable. We have been chatting quite a bit and have a coffee date Tuesday.”

“Ha! He better have lots of love because he and I have been chatting a ton as well. Our coffee date is Wednesday.”

And so it went. Many first dates and many funny dates before they each found their loves.

On deck, highlights from some of these first dates.