Bruce Willis & Farrah Fawcett

My activities last evening consisted of dinner, playing one half a game of Mattel football (Visitors were leading 17-16 on difficulty level PRO2), playing a few games of Texas Hold 'Em online, watching the episode of The Jeffersons where George donates a kidney, watching parts of Monday Night Football, and writing a couple of poems/lyrics.

Quite the bachelor utopia I've created, no? This is why I usually answer "nothing" anytime someone asks me what I'm doing.

I started thinking, what am I holding onto? What about this single life can I not bear to give up? And from that, I started thinking about what I'm looking for in a girl. And do I even know?

I dated a girl some years ago who had made a list. Of things she wanted in her future husband. She had come up with fourteen things, and I matched all but one of them. We dated for a couple of years, broke up, and she married someone else.

But as I've travelled on, I've come to find that many girls have a similar list. Maybe even most girls? Qualities and characteristics of their ideal man.

Now for the record, let me just state here that my ideal man would be Bruce Willis. He's tough, yet sensitive, did movies and TV successfully, and went bald proudly, all the while remaining popular and attractive. But I digress.

Where does this idea of a list come from? Is it from some movie? Or something your mother tells you? Is it something you start at slumber parties? Or does it come from some teen magazine? Is this what girls do when you go to the restroom together, unfold your pieces of paper and compare lists?

The lists that I've been privy to contain such things as physical characteristics, what kind of job he would have, to even more trivial things like he has to be able to play the guitar, be able to drive a stick shift, and must like football. OK, so the last one isn't trivial at all. Actually, let's make that the last two.

I've never written out a list. (And clearly that's working out well for me.) I think with guys maybe it's more of a mental list. I remember when I was a kid, my ideal woman was Farrah Fawcett. (And kinda still is.) I always thought blondes were prettier than brunettes. I even liked Bo Duke more than Luke because he had blonde hair.

But when I think about it, as I've grown up (physically if not mentally), I've hardly dated any girls with blonde hair. Only a couple come to mind, and they weren't naturally blonde.

My thought is that our lists change over time. Some things we're looking for stay the same. But as we mature, hopefully we realize trivial things aren't important. Some relationships might even open us up to new things and make us realize we were limiting ourselves before.

I won't attempt to make a list here. But there are some things that I look for, and I've always looked for, that I know deep down I couldn't be happy without. Honesty. Trust. Respect. Similar interests and beliefs. Interesting conversation.

I always pictured a relationship where we would stand by each other thru thick and thin. An us against the world mentality. That no matter who or what was against us, as long as we had each other, we would make it. You know, kinda like Luke and Laura.

Do you have a list? Or did you? What was on it? And how has it changed over the years?

"If my break never came like I thought it would, Honey would you stand by me?"