I have precious little to offer by way of dating advice, because I have precious little experience in the field.

I didn't care too much for boys when I was a teenager.  Well, dating more so than boys.  I had zero interest in dating because all good girls know that dating puts you in situations that you don't want to be in like explaining away a hickey to your dad or contracting the clap.

I met Dave on, like, my second day of college and if you have a boyfriend in college you just go to basement parties and the caf together, which are hardly dates.  But a much better alternatives than what my friends were doing (see: hickeys and clap)

These days dates usually end up with me falling asleep on the couch in front of Netflix or building ramps with Dr. Seuss books to figure out the best and most precise angle that McQueen will jump the highest and roll the furthest and not flip over upon impact. 

I can tell you all about that, if that's the sort of stuff you are looking for.
But I'm for shit on dating advice of the normal kind.

***

Back in my olden days, there were three boys that I really liked liked and thought were super cute and they managed to crush my heart into a thousand tiny pieces before I somehow got on with life.

Three.

And where are those boys now?

Boy 1: Barely graduated high school, despite attending faithfully almost every single day from K-12.  Dedicated, adorable, genuinely nice and accidentally hilarious, but not too smart.  He delivers parcels these days, and my mom says he is still very handsome.  She sees him when he brings stuff to the courthouse.

That's my mom, always loving a man in uniform.
Wondering what brown can do for her.

Boy 2: Is rumored to be dating the guy who cuts my mom's hair.
(Why is it that my  mom has been mentioned twice in this post?  Ick.)

But we are friends and I'm over it all and he's back at home living at his mom's but when he lived here in Philadelphia we hung out a few times and I was completely okay with it and didn't have the urge to hug him or touch his face or anything like that.  I effectively crushed that crush nearly 20 years ago when I realized that no matter how many carnations I sent to his homeroom on carnation day he wasn't going to send any back.  Now that I am almost 100% sure he likes boys I feel a lot better about it all.

It actually makes me like him more, because I have this thing for gay boys.  I love them with unhealthy proportions of my love that I have available to give to the world.  But gayboy love is so completely different than crush love, so it's all good.

Boy 3: who is really Boy 2 chronologically but I'd rather save the worst for last came up on my Facebook suggested friends list.

He was sort of a drama dork in middle school (I don't remember if we went to high school together.  It was big and you didn't see everyone who went there.  I think I assumed he moved away), always in the school plays and in the chorus and in band.  A geek, obsessed with Nintendo and sort of a kiss ass towards the teachers.  SO not my type but man alive did I like the way he looked.
You know, when I was 11, and I had a type.
I really liked that  he was missing the tooth behind his top pointy dogtooth.  It fell out when he fell off his bike and his mom's insurance wouldn't cover a false one until he lost his 12 year old molars because it would somehow mess up the spacing in his mouth. 
To this day I find a missing back tooth a desirable trait in someone.  Provided that the rest of the teeth are in tip top shape, of course.

Anyway, so he comes up on my suggested friends list because we have four friends in common and this is his profile picture:

Eyes, mouth, and horns added by me to protect his identity because it might be illegal to lift people's photographs off and post them on your blog.
Well, it's Facebook, so it's probably totally legal.
Just rude.
You can totally click on that to embiggen it.

Holy crap.
The bad tattoos.  The Budweiser.  The Confederacy.  The knife.  The jean shorts.  The sword.  The shaved head in close proximity to all those things I just listed. 
All things that I'm vehemently opposed to.

And that's just his profile picture.
You should see some of the other stuff on there.
What a winner.
The one who got away.
He told me he didn't like me because I had glasses and braces and was too skinny and tall.
I thought I would die, and that I could never love again and no one would ever love me because I was so gangly and hideous.

But braces come off and contacts go in and someone becomes a White Supremacist and we all move on.

I have no problem directing you to his page if you ask.  But I'm not going to post it here.  That would be wrong.

Lucky for the part of my soul that deals with all things unrequited, these guys aren't all that dreamy.  They aren't members of the Erie Yacht Club.  Or living in Forest Glen.  Or driving DeLoreans.  Or dining nightly at the Pufferbelly.  Or getting me pregnant with eight babies.  Or doing anything that I ever MASHed us to do.

Do kids still MASH?

If your kids are MASHing, tell them that it's a waste of time.

All that paper.
All those dreams.
All the planning.
All for naught.

Thank God.