My recent dating history has me wondering…am I sweet spirit?

To put it mildly, my dating life has been disappointing over the last year. I have gone on some dates, but none of my romantic prospects ever evolved into anything serious and sustainable.

I don’t blame the girls I took out — rather, I attribute the unprofitability of my romantic undertakings to my ugly appearance. Guys, I have come to a startling discovery…I am a sweet spirit.

“Sweet spirit” is a label more commonly given to women; however, I do not know what the male equivalent is, so I’m just going to appropriate the term for my own purposes. Essentially, if you haven’t inferred it already, a sweet spirit is a derogatory term used to describe a homely girl in the church.

But today, we are broadening its definition to include yours truly. Now, over the course of my life, I’ve surreptitiously gathered data on my attractiveness using a scale from 1–10, and for me, the average is 6.5, the maximum is 8, the minimum is -10 (While it’s a ten point scale, a value of 1 was not low enough to adequately capture my physical repulsiveness for one respondent), and the mode is 7. Also, all you statistics nerds out there, don’t bother checking my math — these numbers are completely arbitrary.

Okay, scoring an average of 6.5, I land within the “medium ugly” designation. Below, I have provided a definition of “medium ugly:”

I meet most of the conditions given by this definition, except for the one that states “some chicks think you really fine.” So though, I don’t match the “medium ugly” classification to a tee, I fit it just enough.

But Daniel, you are 6’4” and have an athletic build — well, those favorable attributes are totally negated by an acne scarred face and crooked nose (I collided with the outfield fence during a baseball practice when I was 11). Let’s take a peek at the severity of my acne during my freshman year of college (viewer discretion is advised):

Jeepers! What an absolute horror show! Hannibal Lecter would have done the world a favor if he had skinned that face. And yes, I am on a merry-go-round — my red, splotchy face sure made all those little kids disperse in terror, which allowed me to have all these gaudy ponies to myself. I guess that was the one and only perk to having such a pimple-infested complexion.

In college, they called me “Bumps.” I recall one geography class when the professor misplaced his topographic map of the Himalayas. I heard him shout out, “Hey Bumps, come over here.” He then asked me to lie on the table while he explained the formation of the mountain range by using my uneven skin as a substitute map.

Another one of my nicknames was “Braille Face.” Let’s just say a blind person could have read the entirety of War and Peace by tracing my pimples. There was this blind girl, and every once in a while, when I’d see her running her finger on the signs just outside the classrooms, I’d place my face over one of them as she approached. She would then gently caress my cheek ever so nimbly — it was the only time a woman ever touched me. There was just one tiny problem — my acne happened to spell “bathroom.” And that’s where I bring this story to a screeching halt.

So fast forward to now, although my pimply predicament has largely been contained and resolved, I still bear those indelible scars. Sorry, we never really got around to addressing my broken nose — perhaps, I’ll save that for a later post. We can belabor the point all we want, but I’m ugly — that’s the only reasonable explanation for my futility in the dating game. At least I hope so..because if I’m not a sweet spirit, then that just means I have a lousy personality. And I can’t live with that.