Squawk Radio

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

SUSAN ELIZABETH PHILLIPS PUTS ON HER SQUAWKIN' HAT!

I’m a frequent lurker and I’m thrilled to be here officially. Today, I’m thinking about blind dates…

First, however, let me announce that the paperback release of my New York Times bestseller MATCH ME IF YOU CAN is on the shelves. The book came out in hardback in August 2005 and is another of my Chicago Stars books. In MATCH ME, Annabelle Granger, a young woman with a checkered employment history, inherits her grandmother’s matchmaking business and takes on the client from hell, a super sports agent who expects her to find him the perfect wife. Unfortunately, his idea of perfect isn’t the same as hers. It’s a little like Bridget Jones meets Jerry McGuire.

Which brings me back to the subject of blind dates -- both fixing up friends and going on them yourself. Unlike my heroine Annabelle, I have a lousy track record as a matchmaker, probably because I’m not very selective. If my friends are both single and approximately the same age, that’s good enough for me.

I find it fascinating how many women have met their future husbands on a blind date. That’s how I met my husband Bill. I was a first year high school teacher and another staff member fixed us up. He was an engineering student at Ohio State. I still remember my first sight of him through the glass panes in my parents’ front door. Tall, medium brown hair falling over his forehead, jacket collar turned up, and a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. Yippee! A bad boy for Miss Goody Two Shoes! And it got better. He drove like a maniac. (My father almost had a heart attack when we pulled out of the driveway.) He came from a big, blue-collar, ethnic Catholic family. I came from a small, white-collar, very waspish protestant family. How could I help but fall in love?

That bad boy is now a loving grandpa who hasn’t smoked in at least 25 years and no longer drives like a maniac. (Well, not most of the time.) We’ve been married for thirty-five years, so I’m definitely a fan of blind dates.

What about you? Any horrific or wonderful ones? Are you a good matchmaker? Tell all!
Eloisa James, 11:29 AM
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