I'm sitting here tonight listening to the Rollins Band.  I mean what better way to get in the mood for the upcoming Valentine's Day than to listen to Rollins Band stuff, right?  With songs like "You Didn't Need To Do That To Me" and "Rejection"...well I can't think of anything more romantic...hahahaha.  Some have told me I'm too bitter when it comes to relationships and dating and everything, and my response is usually "nooooo...really?" stated in a very sarcastic manner.  Why am I this way?  Gee...I can't imagine.  Maybe it has to do with the epiphany that hit me the other day...so read on....

As Valentine’s Day approaches I’ve been doing a lot of thinking.  I’ll go to the stores and see guys buying candy and cards and everything, and wonder to myself why I don’t have that special someone to do something for.  So, I’ve spent some time over the last few days analyzing past relationships and trying to figure out what went wrong so I could improve myself and be a better person.  In doing this, I came to a conclusion that answered that age-old question for me of “why didn’t it work out?”  The reason none of them worked out was quite simple…so simple in fact that once I realized it, an inner peace came over me that I haven’t felt in years.  All these years I’ve wondered why my dating life always ended in a disaster because I never really got any closure any of the times a relationship ended, and now I have my answer.  What was the answer?  Here it is – every girl I’ve gone out with was a completely selfish sociopath....yeah...I'm not kidding.  Now I’m not talking about someone I may have gone out with once or twice and we just didn’t connect, I’m talking about all the others…the ones where a few months down the road I’m thinking to myself “how in the heck did I get stuck in this mess???”  Now, you may be wondering how is it that I would put up with a selfish sociopath for more than a week seeing how I’m so intelligent, and I do have an answer…a frog in boiling water.  Ever heard of this?  If you haven’t, allow me to explain.  If you take a pot of boiling water and throw a frog into it, they’ll jump right out.  But if you put a frog in a pot of water and slowly bring it to a boil, the frog will just sit there and cook to death.  That’s the best way I can explain it, and it’s pretty accurate to describe my past situations.  Everything always seems cool for the first few weeks, and then one little thing happens…some kind of issue arrives…but I dismiss it because I know that no one is perfect.  So everything keeps moving forward and before I know it I’m dealing with a first-class nutjob.  And guess what happens…it makes ME into a nutjob as well.  I like things simple, I’m a meat and potatoes kind of guy.  If I’m ordering a pizza I just get pepperoni, on a burger I get lettuce and cheese, when I cook I just throw something in the microwave, and when someone tells me something, I like to think I can take it at face value instead of having to dissect it for the hidden message.  Like when a girl tells me she didn’t call me back one night because she fell asleep because she wasn’t feeling well, I would like to think that was the truth instead of finding out that she was actually out all night with another guy.  When a girl tells me “I can’t imagine my life without you”, I would like to think that was the truth instead of having it mean “I’m going back to my old boyfriend next week”.  Oh I’ve picked some real gems before, that’s for sure.  When everything ends, because I’ve been lied to so many times I never know what to believe…so I catch myself spending WAY too much time analyzing everything and wondering what went wrong…but now I know…selfish sociopaths.  Sociopaths are people who can lie with no regret as to how the other person might feel…they basically create a life as to how they want to be perceived and lie about it the whole time, even when confronted with the truth, like Ted Bundy for instance…hahahaha.  For example, I’ve gone out with a couple of girls…and I should have seen it coming the second time around but I didn’t…that had a few issues that arose as time went on.  Well these issues were things that they had to resolve, and of course that means I got the old “it’s not you, it’s me” speech.  Guess what happened?  They both resolved their issues and went on to have normal and happy relationships and learned their lessons never to lead anyone on or play with anyone’s emotions ever again.  HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!   RIIIIIGHT!!!!  In reality what happened is they supposedly resolved their issues but are the same people they were before, leading guys on and playing with a guy’s emotions all for their own selfish satisfaction.  Oh, they would NEVER say they were doing that….oh no…they claim they have learned their lessons and if someone is mistaking their intentions, well they aren’t doing anything on purpose.  Uh-huh…I don’t buy that for a second.  So they just go on with their life in a state of ignorant bliss, meanwhile there’s a guy locked in his bedroom with an acoustic guitar writing songs about how he’ll never love again because his heart will always belong to her and blah blah blah.  Oh yes ladies, it happens.  Now I haven’t done the acoustic guitar, but I’ll admit I’ve written some of the LAMEST crap ever just pouring my heart out onto paper about a girl and thinking to myself the entire time “there is no one who could possibly understand the emptiness I feel right now…I am the king of heartache and suffering”.  See, that’s what happens when you go out with a selfish sociopath…one night you’re out at dinner having a good time, and the next thing you know you’re locked in your bedroom writing such stuff as “with you in my life, there is nothing I can’t do…you take away all my fears and give me belief in myself, just knowing you want to talk to me gives me hope…and when I do something that makes you smile I know I’ve touched your heart…if only I could capture that moment forever it would be what Heaven must be like”….hahahahaha.  No, that’s not anything I’ve actually ever written…but that’s the kind of crap I’m talking about.  One girl that was listening to me rant once about the type of women I always end up with told me “well, you just pursue the wrong kind then”.  My question to her was that if I don’t know that they’re lying to me, then how in the heck am I supposed to know they’re the wrong type?  Now I also know that there are TONS of guys out there who are the same way…so how is it two people ever meet that can put up with each other enough to spend the rest of their lives together?  It completely baffles me.  Wait, I think I figured it out…you know how when you multiply two negative numbers it equals a positive number?  I think that’s it…I think that when two completely self-absorbed liars meet, somehow the negatives cancel each other out and become positives!  Wow…I never thought math would have a useful application.  Yeah, I know there are exceptions to this rule, that a couple of normal people end up somehow bumping into each other as they travel through life…so I hold out hope for myself…hahahahaha….like I’m normal.  I mean I guess I am in the grand scheme of things even though I do have my quirks.  It used to be that I had some lofty goals a woman had to meet for me to want to be with her.  They originally started with criteria such as they had to like Black Sabbath, they needed to like football, play video games, and love horror movies.  Well, once I realized that would NEVER happen I started to lessen my demands…and now my criteria are two things – just be nice-looking and don’t lie to me….hahahahaha.  Anything else is an added bonus.  Do you see what I’ve been reduced to?  In a few more years I’ll probably reduce my demands to where the criteria is “must be female”.  Oh I’m just kidding…because the weird thing is that the older I get, the less I care about finding that “special someone”.  You would think it would be the opposite, wouldn’t you?  I mean it would be cool and everything if it happened, but as I get older and more set in my ways, I’m not as willing to put up with all the crap like I used to be.  Let’s see, spend an entire evening wondering why she’s mad at me because she won’t say, or watch some South Park episodes on DVD and laugh hysterically.  Wow…that’s a tough choice.

Ok, and now for a tale of romance.  If you thought “The Notebook” was touching and made you cry, then just wait for this saga.  Get the Kleenex ready for the tears you’ll shed.  I’ll give you a second to grab them.  Alright, ready?  The following is a true story about a woman I met about 10 years ago…and to this day it still haunts me.  You’ll see what I mean as the story unfolds.  If you think you know about lost-love, just you wait.  At the time, I was working at Comp USA selling computers to people who had no business buying one…oh man the idiotic questions I would get would just wear me down.  Each day I went to work, and each day it was the same old drudgery, like working in the salt mines.  But one day a ray of sunshine brightened the store…her name was Veronica.  I had just helped someone out to their car with a new PC and slowly headed back inside, dreading the next moron I was going to have to talk to.  I made my way back to the hardware section, and there was this dark-haired hottie standing by the help counter.  I looked over at her and she smiled, so me being the knight in shining armor that I am with my cape flowing behind me rushed to her aid.  I asked her if she needed some help…which was a STUPID question considering she’s standing at the help desk…but she smiled and introduced herself.  She explained to me that she designs web pages for people and someone had sent her a disk with some files on it done in Microsoft Publisher.  The problem was, the files were saved in the newest edition of Publisher and she had the previous version, so she couldn’t open the files.  She was wondering if we had a PC with Publisher loaded on it just so she could make sure the files were valid before she spent the money on a new version since she wouldn’t be able to return the program if it was open.  Well, it just so happened that we did have a PC with the latest version loaded on it, so I told her “Sure, it’s right back here” and we went behind the wall where the computers were on display into a pseudo-office and had a red-hot passionate make-out session.  Ummm…not really.  We did go back to the office area and I loaded the disk, opened up Publisher, and brought up the files.  She was thrilled as she scrolled through the different pages…and while she viewed them I had the chance to ask about the work she does.  At the time, I was a novice when it came to understanding HTML and had a VERY crude NFL site I was doing.  She told me she did websites for businesses both locally and also that were in other cities, started explaining to me about that particular client and what she was doing, so I brought up that I was just starting to learn how to do all that but there was a lot I didn’t know.  Then, to really play the role of a knight in shining armor, I was able to save that file she was looking at as a file that would open in the previous version so she wouldn’t have to buy the latest one.  Pretty smooth, eh?  We talked for a little while more and then she pulled out a piece of paper and wrote her name and phone number on it.  She told me to give her a call and we could get together and she could show me how to do stuff on my website and hang out.  After she left, just about every dude I worked with was like “man…you got her number???” and I was like “of course I did fellas…just watch me and you might learn a few things”.  Yeah, I said something like that….at least that’s the way I like to remember it.  But regardless of my reply, the dudes were pretty impressed.  So I waited the obligatory couple of days like the movie “Swingers” talks about, and I called her one night.  We ended up talking for a long time about all sorts of stuff…movies, music, things that happened to us growing up, just a myriad of topics and she seemed really cool.  It started to get kind of late, and she asked what I was doing the next day…and it just so happened I had the day off so she invited me to her house and gave me directions on how to get there.  Oh yeah, I thought I was in for quite a day.  It was quite a day…but nothing like I thought it was going to be.  I headed up to her place in the early afternoon.  She was meeting with a client and told me she’d be home around 2.  Me being the punctual person that I am arrived at 2, got out of my car, and went to knock on the door thinking the romance gods were smiling down on me.  This was the last pleasant and peaceful thought I had that day.  The door opens and it’s a little kid…a boy who looked like he was about 5.  I asked if his mom was home and he just shook his head “no”.  Well, this was quite an awkward situation.  Not knowing exactly what to do, I basically said “ok” and walked back to my car.  It had to be the wrong house, right?  I got in my car and double checked the address…nope…it was the right house.  Now if a kid had answered and she had been home, I could have made some sense of that…like she had a kid but didn’t want to say over the phone thinking it might scare me off.  But a little kid answers the door and she’s not around?  Even if the kid had a babysitter, more then likely the babysitter would have answered the door.  I was sitting in my car baffled thinking maybe I should just leave, and that’s when she pulled up.  She got out of her car wearing a black mini-skirt, boots, and a tight sweater…so yeah I got out of the car and went inside.  The kid was sitting on the couch watching cartoons, and she asked me if I wanted something to drink, to which I declined…I was still trying to figure out why this kid was home alone, but wasn’t quite sure how to bring it up.  I sit down on the couch, still feeling a little puzzled, when she comes in and sits down.  She starts talking about the client she met and the project she’ll be working on, and I’m still trying to make sense of all this.  Now, have you ever seen the Seinfeld where Jerry goes to a girl’s apartment (played by Amanda Peet) and she introduces him to a guy that lives there with her?  Remember how confused he was?  Well, while Veronica was talking to me, a guy comes from around the corner and goes “hey man…you must be Bo…my name’s Steve” and comes over and shakes my hand.  She gets up and says “I thought you might be asleep and didn’t want to wake you” and they kiss.  He asks how her meeting went, she said it went well, and all I could think about was leaving…hahahaha.  Turns out this dude was her HUSBAND.  Now guys, I don’t know about you, but if I was married and my wife gave out our number to some dude and said they should get together, and then talked on the phone with him for a while one night and NEVER mentioned she was married, I’d probably be a little ticked off, wouldn’t you?  I guess in their world it was no big deal.  Well, Steve tells me to come over to the computer because he wanted to take a look at my website and help me out since I was able to help out his wife a few days before.  He showed me stuff, typed up some code for me, and the whole time I’m trying to figure out how to just leave.  Just an hour before that, I think I’m going to be hooking up with some dark-haired hottie and the next thing I know I’m being taught HTML code by her husband while the kid plays in the background…hahahahaha.  After a while, I said I needed to get going to meet a friend of mine and blah blah blah…so I thanked Steve for showing me the stuff, told Veronica I’d talk to her later (yeah riiiight), and got in my car with only one thought in mind – just to get home and pretend this never happened.  All I needed to do was to start the car up and be on my way…yep…just turn the key and “clack clack clack”.  “Huh…that’s odd” I thought to myself so I tried again…”clack clack clack”.  I knew it wasn’t the battery because all the dashboard lights were on bright, radio worked fine, everything….so that meant it had to be the starter which also meant I wasn’t going anywhere.  With my head hanging low, I walked back to the front door and knocked.  Veronica answered and I explained my situation and then went inside to call a tow truck.  This meant I had to hang out for about another 30 minutes and wait, when all I wanted to do was get home and turn on Mortal Kombat.  The tow truck showed up and guess what...the dude didn't have any room in the truck for me so Veronica said she would give me a ride to the garage...wonderful.  I once again said good-bye to her husband, she drove me to where my car was being taken.  She dropped me off, I thanked her...and she actually said to give her a call sometime...can you believe that?  It was too weird for me.  I sat there while my car was being worked on and had plenty of time to reflect on the day and still couldn't make any sense of it.  I guess in some people's world that a married woman can just invite guys over???  Who knows.  Well after the car was fixed and I shelled out a few hundred bucks, I went home and played Mortal Kombat where Baraka became the supreme ruler of the Outerworld.  Did I ever talk to her again?  Yeah, her and her husband came by the store a few times but that was pretty much it.

See...that's the kind of luck I have.  I know I really didn't discuss specifics on the selfish sociopaths, but I figured my story was pretty funny regardless.  Hope you enjoyed a good laugh at my expense...hahahahaha.   Oh there was this one time while in college this girl who worked at the convenience store right up the road from where I lived constantly flirted with me...and when I asked her out she said "thanks...but i'm engaged".

Hey...it's their loss, right?  Yep, I do believe so.

So this Valentine's Day I'll come home to my faithful best buddy Vick (my dog) and watch "Saw II"...I can't imagine a better way to spend it.  At least I don't have to try to figure out what he means by the way he acts...it's either "I'm hungry", "throw the ball in the yard for me to chase" or "rub my belly".  Gotta keep it simple!