Have you ever bailed on a date because you couldn’t remember what the guy looked like?

Chances are you have. I think I’ve done that at least six times. Here’s the scenario…

You meet a guy in a bar when your beer goggles are in full effect. On top of the blurred vision, there is a lot going on to distract you like your best friend making out with the bartender, for example.

With all of these factors you willingly give out your phone number, which is great, until the next day when he calls and you can’t remember if he had blond hair, black hair, if he wore glasses, or if he was short.

You decide to call him back and make a go of it. He’s nice, he gets you to laugh, and his text messages are sweet. He asks you out on a date and you feel compelled to go, but then at the last minute you bail because you know you can’t pick him out of crowd.

Is this the right thing to do? Take our poll and tell us if this is what you would do in that scenario.

Do you have a blind date story you’d like to share? Send us your tales and we’ll post it here on Dating Tales.

My friend Violet recently met a guy on Match. The two of them had a lot in common, namely a love of camping and a fear of blue-colored foods. Combine this with the fact that she had been online for almost a year, so she was pretty comfortable doing the “almost-blind-date” thing after only few e-mails.

“I met him in the bar of the new sushi restaurant downtown, and before we’d even sat down for dinner he went in for a kiss,” Violet said. “I turned my face so he only got my cheek, but I was like “hello, can I at least have a drink first?”

Violet said he laughed it off and then reached for her hand. When she pulled her hand away he put his arm around her shoulders. Violet and I agree that men like this could be desperate, misunderstood, or maybe just unable to decipher social cues, but creepy nonetheless.

Once they finally did sit down for dinner he promptly took off his right shoe and did the footsy thing by the way, do other people really do this? I’ve never played footsy and as far as I know it’s just a tool screenwriters use to create sexual tension among their characters in the movie. (Please respond by answering this week’s poll, I’m truly curious to know).

Anyhow, Violet’s response was to scowl. She has what should be a patented scowl, one that I’ve never been able to duplicate. It’s a mixture of shock, disgust, frustration, and disapproval. I wish I could describe it better, but I’m unable to find words for the way she contorts and scrunches her facial muscles along with the way she drops her head to look at you from the corner of her eyes. It’s a talent only she possesses and a message her date should have received immediately.

“There were so many problems with him at this point,” Violet explained. “For starters he’s flirting the way men do in soft-porn, and he wasn’t smart enough to translate my scowl to really mean, back the f&#$ off! So I just asked him, flat out. “What is your problem? Don’t you know how to behave on a date?”

Again the guy just laughed and responded by grabbing her hands across the table saying, “don’t you know what its like to have someone come on to you?”

“Yah, I do, and I don’t really like it,” she responded as he ran all ten of his fingers across hers. “Do you have itchy finger tips or something, why are you still touching me?”

She decided to stay and struggle through the dinner, but only because she felt it was an opportunity to help all woman-kind everywhere, or at the minimum at least help the next Match.com victim. Sadly all her efforts were lost on him. The next day, in the customary follow-up Match e-mail, he wrote that he enjoyed their date and looked forward to kissing her voluptuous lips and holding hands for real, like grown ups do.

Now, neither Violet nor I know what this means exactly, but it sounds dirty and so she wrote back saying, “I will absolutely not be seeing you again. And hey, do me a favor; please always keep your shoes on when in public.”

Well done Violet. Couldn’t have said it better myself. So for the rest of you out there that struggle with an itchy-fingered date, here is a recap:

* Make a joke about him being too affectionate
* Give a dirty look
* Ask him what his problem is
* Advise him of his dating practice faux pas
* Advise him of his dating practice faux pas in a follow up e-mail

Happy dating.