"Too Picky?" II:
The Second Date

BG was crabby enough when Time writer Walter Kirn intimated that single women are walking around with ever-more specific and venal man-shopping lists clutched in their ringless, age-spotted hands. "Now, it seems that what's wanted is a soul mate, a sort of buff Buddha who's terrific in bed, who's on top of his health, his finances and his emotions and can serve in a pinch as a spiritual adviser."

(Well, duh. But not really. )

Then came a recent editorial by Scott Gottlieb in USA Today entitled: "Don't Wait too Long to Have a Child." Pegging his argument on the trend toward later marriage and women "embracing the single life," the writer (a medical resident at Mount Sinai) then details all the grody and scary things that can happen to babies of older parents. Amniocentesis is not a panacea, he warns. Prenatal science, he points out, is moving about as slowly as...we are toward marriage. These are all valid health facts and concerns, I'm sure.

But then he goes and says, "All of the thirtysomething single women I know are still waiting patiently for their knight in shining armor to ride down Madison Avenue in a Porsche and whisk them off to his summer mansion in the Hamptons."

Excuse me?

First of all, Madison Avenue goes uptown.

Second of all...ooookay. Maybe the thirtysomething women he knows (not all of whom, if I may, are so "patient"). How about the ones I know, the ones I hear from every day? Does he actually think that while his acquaintances are, er, standing on street corners, there are an equivalent number of guys lined up against a wall somewhere like a high school dance, just waiting, with written guarantees of interest, returned calls, and commitment to a family tucked in their Dockers?

I'm not trying to fan the flames of the dating wars, blah blah blah. Boring.

I am trying to say: Yo Gottlieb, WE ARE FREAKING TRYING.

NEXT:
The singles BG knows...