Searching for Ms. Hot

My 24-year-old son is home from Tucson this weekend. He has spent countless hours looking at FaceBooks trying to pick out the perfect date. He is very tall and good looking. But he is also very shy. His standards for women, however, rule out 99% of the playing field. We have had some interesting – sometimes funny, sometimes combative – discussions about the perfect date. It is quite apparent that an age span of 30+ years gives you a different perspective. His main criterion is HOT. But then SMART is a quick second. It’s really hard to tell from a posed photo and a paragraph which of 500 women qualify. Could take a lot of first dates to find out. I keep relating stories about things like my first high school reunion, where all the HOT girls were fat and dumber than ever. I also suggested that he ultimately look for someone he wouldn’t mind waking up next to 30 years later. He said that was definitely not one of his criteria.

Come to think of it, when I was his age, my criteria were certainly different than they would be today. We didn’t use the word HOT, although there was always a similar description. One HOT guy I dated put a notch in his bed for every girl he slept with – no I didn’t add a notch if you were wondering. But we did have a lot of fun dancing as we slugged away at a bottle of RIPPLE – God-awful stuff that was. I do remember the confusion of looking for someone to add some sort of permanence to my life. I went on a lot of first dates and rejected some really nice guys. I’m almost embarrassed now about some of those relationships – how could I do it? But then I too was rejected several times, and it definitely hurts. Was I ever HOT? Probably not. I did have long straight blond hair that hung down to my butt and very long legs. But those were probably my most redeeming qualities. Today that image is just a memory. I also have a memory of those days of searching, thinking that the perfect mate (at least short-term) was just around the corner. I hope Dan finds the perfect girl and I hope she appreciates him for the really great guy that he is beneath this macho “searching for Ms. Hot” exterior.