Googling someone you want to date or are about to date is such a lame thing to do that I don’t even know where to start.

While it’s okay to google a prospective client or business associate or new roofer, I refuse to google a prospective date or romantic partner.

Googling someone to see what’s “out there” about them is just plain snooping. But it’s like snooping for sophomores. Fuggedaboudit.

If you really want the goods on someone, you’ve got to snoop like a senior. A senior in high school.

You’ve got to rifle through the mail on their kitchen counter when they step away from the kitchen; you’ve got to thumb feverishly through their wallet while they’re in the shower; you’ve got to jab every button on their crackberry like you’re punch drunk for the whirlwind two minutes it takes them to make another shaker-full of martini.

Okay, I can’t admit to doing any of those things, but it’s probably just because I know I”m not fast enough to pull them off.

I have however, assiduously studied the books on men’s book shelves looking for signs of intelligent life — too much Tom Clancy, just like too much Milan Kundera, and I’m outta there. I have, I’m ashamed to admit, stolen a peek in their medicine cabinets making sure they don’t have more skin care products than moi. I have, yes, I have, pulled open the freezer door to see what brand of vodka they have on ice.

I know, I know. I oughtta be ashamed.

But, I’m not! Cause at LEAST I’m not googling! Googling is so last year, so 1999, so something someone on Facebook would do.

I’m an old-school snooper and proud of it! Whoops, I mean … I’m not proud of it! Snooping is so wrong on so many levels, but, hey, each time I did it I found out stuff that though I didn’t want to know … maybe I needed to know, and was glad to know, and maybe sometimes wish I’d never known.

I once opened the glove compartment in a guy’s car while he was inside the station paying for gas (isn’t this like the lowest of the low? — I wish I could explain it away by saying I did it when I was 22, but in fact, I was 32 and way old enough to know better … sheesh, I deserved what I found out!). Anyway, I rifled through the poor fella’s gas receipts, keeping one sleazy eye on the door to the station; I flipped through registration papers and a couple of coupons for a golf course, and then hit pay dirt. Sort of.

I found a well-worn brochure with certain days and locations circled in red … for Sex Addicts Anonymous meetings!

Good grief. I was on a second date with a sex addict?!

At the time, I didn’t know which to be more upset about — the fact that at any moment he might give in to his addiction and pounce on me … or the fact that at no moment in the collective five hours we’d been together, first on one date and then on beginning of a second, he hadn’t once, not once, pounced on me in any way whatsoever!

What kind of addict was he anyway? Was it bad luck or good luck that I was dating him while he was, um, in recovery?! And what was I? Chopped liver? I couldn’t even get a sex addict to fall off the wagon for me? My snooping was giving me an ego crisis!

I slammed the glove compartment shut and sat tight, debating who was worse — me with my snooping or him with his, um, sexy little secret.

I’m ashamed to say that over dinner (which was where we were headed), I rounded the conversation to the subject of addiction and to his credit, he told me about his “recovery” efforts without any prompting from me. He was brave enough to admit his “problem” and I was cowardly enough to NOT even say “Oh, yeah, I ‘accidentally’ found your meeting schedule while I was looking for a tissue!”

I really did learn something about myself that night, a couple of things actually.

One was that I was a schmuck for snooping and second, that I wasn’t brave enough to go out on a third date with a self-professed sex addict. I guess in my mind being a snoop was better than being addicted to sex. But really, who knows? I mean there are WORSE things to be addicted to, right?….. Like chocolate?

Now, if you google me, you’ll find out all sorts of things I don’t want you to know. They’re my dirty little secrets and please don’t waste your time trying to find them out.

Like, I’m in Witsec of course. That goes without saying, doesn’t it?

I’m naturally blonde.

I hate cats. Love dogs.

And, I’m actually a man. But you knew that already, I’m sure.