As referenced in my last post, I’ve tried my hand at online dating.  I deliberated a bit before trying it ( at the suggestion of a Mum from one of my daughters ‘ schools ) but then paid up for 6 months and dived ( well wheeled and then tipped  ) in.

Without my injury I can’t really have seen myself doing it – bit sad/ desperate etc – but you really don’t realise how completely ‘ normal ‘ this stuff has become, until you’re in it. Now when I’m out and I see two people talking in a bar or even a coffee shop and they don’t look as if they’re  familiar with each other, my default assumption is that they’re on an online date.

My reticence was for obvious reasons. Who the f*** would want to go out with a bloke in a bloody wheelchair ? I can’t stand the f****** thing, so how is anyone else, particularly an attractive female, going to find it at all likeable? To me, it was a case of an obvious date killer, so I absolutely did NOT put pictures of me in a wheelchair on my ‘ profile’ .  That’s not to say that I put pictures of me pre injury in, because I didn’t – they were all ( 5 ) of me after my accident, but not actually featuring the metal bits that now come with me.

What happens is that you get ‘ chat / meet requests ( or send them ) and then you start messaging each other on the app/site …

Well I’m fine with the chat stuff  ( as you might imagine ) but there comes a point where you just have to mention the minor detail of being paralysed from the chest down.  It kinda becomes necessary when the potential date talks about hill walking/ surfing/ having a bedroom in the attic.

I figured that it was best to pre write a few paragraphs about my history, and then copy and paste it into a message, before any actual date took place. I mean you can’t just turn up in a wheelchair and pretend it’s not there, can you?

Expecting to always get ‘the knock back ‘ every time I sent the copy and paste, I was amazed to find that actually…. women aren’t that shallow.  Given that men are definitely that shallow, I had pre-judged the other half of the population.

It wouldn’t be right to give any details away, but I can honestly say that all of my online date experiences have been lovely ( in other words that the girls/ladies have been lovely ). I’m not exactly hard to talk to, so it’s never awkward to talk to anyone, or hasn’t been so far… and i realised that my situation ref finding a cool and compassionate lady wasn’t anywhere near as dire as I thought it would be.

I have a female friend in a chair, who reports that for her ( and she IS a hotty ) it’s really not been a success – proof that men are FAR more f***** up about the chair thing than girls are – I mean how the hell is she going to hoover the stairs, right…?

I won’t be blogging about my dating, but suffice to say that I already have some very funny stories that I could tell… not bad stories (!) but definitely humorous ones.

Last night’s one was really cool. Who knows how my next one will be?

Wouldn’t it be funny if we bumped into Dani and Pringle in a bar…?!  Awks… as the kids might say… especially if I’m sporting his pants?