This one is for my friends....

Yes, this is another entry dedicated entirely to dating. As one friend put it, "this story has trumped all others." So, it must be worthy of a post.

After chatting with this fellow for more than a month and learning that he is 6'5", self-employed, and shared a similar sense of humour, I was looking forward to the first date. We decided to meet down on Queen Street for a drink. He said he was wearing a black shirt.

I rocked on down and met him. Hard to miss a guy who's that tall and he was indeed wearing a black shirt. With shorts. Guys, word to the wise. Unless it's a bazillion degrees out or you're going camping, shorts are not first date material. The pub we met at was jammed so we decided to tour on down Queen to find something else. On the way, we ran into one of his friends and his gf. She was fixing his pants with safety pin. Me, concentrating on "the next thing to say" took a moment before realising it was Snake from Degrassi (whose name is of course Stefan). Not totally shocking when you're in Toronto, but bizarre for a first date. Stefan and his girlfriend were lovely and we carried on our merry way.

Now, I don't exactly remember when it came up though it was early on, that my date told me he had a sleeping disorder of sorts that much like epilepsy caused him to have these sort of narcoleptic fits. At first I didn't really catch on thinking that it must be something that occurred at night, but this was not the case. Several times during the evening he would stop and need to sit down or lean against something for a moment. No biggy really - I mean, if you can't roll with this kind of stuff, what kind of relationship can you really offer someone if you can't roll with the punches, right? Well, I thought so anyway.

We couldn't find much on Queen so we ventured down to the Beaches. Conversation was light, he had a good sense of humour and even took my yellow-helmet jokes in stride. We rocked up to the bar and the poor fellow had another episode. This time it was rather severe, to the point that he needed to lie on the ground for fear of falling over. With people coming in and out of the bar, it definitely looked suspect with some asking me how much he'd had to drink. Not knowing what to say the best I could come up with was, "he's sober and he's fine." Really? Comedic genius aside, that was all I could come up with?! He came to, and we went inside.

Now, some of you may be thinking that I should've bailed by now. Others may be thinking, all right, kind of funny but nothing to worry about. But here you see is where it went downhill. As we were sitting down for a drink his life story started to unfold. He painted a picture of his brother who couldn't make a good life decision if he was paid, his controlling mother who was known to be the gossip/pot-stirrer of the family, his father who had a touch of dementia and smoked three packs a day and no longer showered....well, you get the picture. All I could think was that I certainly didn't want to go there for Sunday dinner, let alone Christmas. Combine this with the fact that the man in his mid-thirties has a roommate, pays less than $500/month to live in a bedroom with no working lights, and was barely ambitious at his "self-employment" to succeed and I was checking out.

The thing about it was, that this is the first date in a long time that I haven't known how to end it. I didn't want this poor guy to think it was because of his disorder, because that was not even close to being it (though definitely cause for a hilarious story later) and he had mentioned many girls couldn't deal with it. And maybe I'm incredibly superficial...I mean who am I to judge....but when you combine all these elements together, well, it was a date of comedic horrors and one that I really don't want to repeat.

I may need to hand over my online profile to my friends and have them pick out my next date because clearly I can't be left to my own devices. Anyone up for the task?