Enough was enough. My fear of choking to death all alone in my apartment — only to be found 9 days later after my cat had eaten my face off and the stench of my decomposing body finally forces my next-door neighbor to call 911 — had reached a point where I started cutting my food into tiny, baby-sized bites.

Tastes Like Chicken!

I owed it to myself and all social retards like me to create a safe place to come together and revel in all the dorky entertainment we could find. So, I crawled out of my hermit shell and organized the “Nerdy Romantics” Meetup. Here is the survey for qualifying members:

If you can answer YES to the following questions, this Meet Up is for you:

1. Are you single or single-ish (i.e. still claim ‘0’ dependents on your W4) WHILE all of your closest friends have either joined the rat race, moved away, gotten married, and/or squeezed out a litter of rugrats — SO that on the off chance you do, in fact, get together, their minds are preoccupied by thoughts of breast pumps and butt paste AND not the new, hip farm-to-table bistro?

2. Are you newish to the city and find that your coworkers or classmates are not people you’d want to meet in a dark alley behind a convenient store — all the while, the already established circle of friends are about as easy to penetrate as the Heathers?

3. Have you tried event planning sites but find most of them host activities far outside the city and at peak traffic hours during the weekdays?

4. Has your Match Dot-Com Bubble burst?

5. Are you somebody who doesn’t mind going out to a movie or dinner alone, but is finding it harder and harder to appreciate other interests without the company of others? Examples:

• You can’t feasibly run a three-legged race with your shin tied to a crash-test dummy.
• Going white-water rafting with just yourself makes for a death-defying uneven weight distribution.
• And finally, nothing is sadder than getting stuck in mid-air after trying to ride a see-saw solo. Take it from me!

6. Are you someone who prefers backyard bocce ball games to smoke-filled bars – AND — picking apples in North Georgia to picking off squirrels with your sawed off shotgun?

7. Have your past four weekends included watching re-runs of Downton Abbey in search of rare, historically inaccurate idioms?

8. Are you one “Teach Yourself to Crochet” You Tube video away from eating cat food out of the can and reviving your old Angus Macgyver Fan Club?

9. Do you go on “The” Facebook primarily to play Scrabble? Do you still wear “Sneakers”? And, did you use the phrase “Bob’s your uncle” recently in casual conversation?

10. Are you tired of coming to the realization that cutting your cookbook recipes down to accommodate ONE single serving turns Rachel Ray’s tuna casserole into a baboon’s ASS-erole?

In less than 2 months, Nerd Rom’s have grown to 225 members. Yet, in the 2 events I actually organized, only 1 other person actually attended, and that was my already-existing friend, who I bribed with free cookies to go.