CONTENTS UNDER PRESSURE: READING TOO MUCH INTO THE DATING SCENE

Trust me on this one: Never try to pick up men in the self-help section of your local bookstore.

Tina called. She and Pookie are history.

"Ancient history," she says. "Ancient, bloody, tragic history."

Translation: She got dumped. For a legal secretary named Beth who just happens to be a redhead. Pookie, as it turns out, is nuts for red hair. He kept nagging Tina to color hers, but she's happy as a (natural) ash blonde.

"Now I'll have to find somebody else," Tina sobbed.

Ain't love grand? You find it, you lose it, you go out and look for more.

In all the wrong places.

I have friends who maintain long and detailed lists of places to meet men. They send me updates regularly.

Bookstores are supposed to be the new meeting places. I like the idea. If I can't find a date, I can always take home a good book. And some bookstores have coffee shops. I'm strongly in favor of caffeine.

My friend Sondra and I visited a large local bookstore not long ago to check out the prospects. And to find something to read.

Really.

Trawling for guys in bookstores offers certain advantages. You can be reasonably sure he can read (you might want to confirm that, though), and you have a pretty good idea of how he acts sober. That's a plus when pondering a relationship, I think.

You do have to be somewhat cautious. Specifically, as Sondra and I have learned, never try to meet men in the self-help section.

There we were, trapped between codependency and relationship issues, and there they were, advancing on us with brand-new copies of "What Women Really Want" and "Getting the Love You Deserve."

It was not pretty.

"I'll create a diversion," Sondra said. "You run for the finance section."

The other good thing about bookstores is they're well-stocked with tomes about why you shouldn't define yourself by your relationships, or more accurately, the lack thereof.

There's a new book out called "The Rules," which, I'm told, advises rolling the clock back to the '50s (possibly that's the 1850s) for dating etiquette. You know, don't call him back the first few times he calls you. Let him make the first move. Take a chaperone along for the first few months.

I guess it appeals to that hunter's instinct men seem to have.

I don't suppose dating has ever been easy.

Well, after many, many years as a single person, I have to admit arranged marriages sound like a reasonable idea, but I think they're illegal in this country.

I'm pondering a few new prospects and I find the usual dilemmas returning. Should I call him? Should I wait till he calls me? If I call him, am I being too aggressive? What if I wait for him to call and he likes aggressive women? When is it a date, and when are we just meeting?

There's a very elaborate structure to all that, too. Meeting for coffee is not a date. It's a pre-date. It's a chance to find out if you want to be seen in public with someone on a real date without all the pressure of committing to said real date.

And if it turns out to be a total disaster, you can always tell your friends, "Well it's not like it was a date-date. We just met for coffee."

Yeah, right.

~Peggy O'Farrell is a copy editor for the Southeast Missourian.