When I was first divorced I didn’t always have good sense when it came to the men I dated. I tried to date men from the church I was attending but the pool of men was slim and slimy.

One of the men I dated was a welder. He lived in another suburb and to say he lived in a house would have been an overstatement.

He lived in a run down shack. One of his bedrooms was wall papered with magazine covers from the 1960’s. His kitchen walls were discolored from a supposed grease fire that happened way before I arrived on the scene.(I guess he didn’t know how to paint, just weld)

This man was intent on being poor and sloppy. Seriously, he did NOT want to be successful.

He also had no manners whatsoever at all. When he got a call on his cell phone when we were in line for a dinner at church he announced loudly that it was from his other girlfriend. I was standing right beside him.

At a dinner theater performance we attended at church when he was done with his plate he looked around at all of the other plates. Seeing there was food left on the other plates he started eating from the plates of the other people who were sitting at our table. I was so embarrassed. Even a dog knows not to do that if they are trained.

During this time in my life my youngest was about three years old and he loved watching Land Before Time. He would crawl around and make dinosaur noises.

I thought he was cute. He even got in trouble for it at swimming lessons one day when he and a swimming buddy were more interested in making dinosaur sounds than in learning how to swim. Didn’t affect his ability to be a star water polo goalie twelve years later so I don’t know what the swim coaches problem was.

One day I was out at a restaurant with this boyfriend and my son. My son decided it was time to play dinosaur. He crawled around under the table and did a bit of growling. My boyfriend gave me a talking to telling me that I was a poor mother because I did not discipline my son for acting like this in a public restaurant.

My thoughts were,”So I guess it is okay to act like an untrained dog at a formal dinner theater as an adult but to act like a dinosaur at three years old is a bit over the top?” Really?

Looking back all I can say as a single mother is that sometimes your kid acting like a dinosaur is one of the best things that can happen to you. I broke up with the jerk soon after.