Age differences and their reprocussions.

Don’t go someplace ultra-fancy for a first date. It’s overkill, and it seems kind of desperate, I think. The best first date I ever went on was when this guy took me out to a casual pizza-and-beer place. It was casual and fun. It made me relaxed, and we ended up hitting it off real well.

For first dates, I’m a fan of the daytime date. It’s less contrived. You can wear comfortable clothes. And it’s conducive to variety – you could walk from the museum to lunch to the park, which I call the hat trick.

Do something completely different on a first date. One of the best dates that I ever went on was when I took a girl to a children’s storytelling session at the library. It was a great date. It was not what she expected, and it was fun.

I went to an NBA game for a first date. It was super fun because the game was exciting, so we could talk about the game while we were having a getting-to-know-each-other chat. And there was that mystery, because we could only occasionally make eye contact.

Have a couple of different places to go. One time I brought two different dates to the same bar in the same week. The second time, the waiter gave me a little attitude. “Back again,” he said.

Simple dates are best. Taco and a beer can be great fun.

Take time to think of topics you and your date can talk about. I picked topics that would be inspiring for my date and fun for both of us to talk about. If you go in prepared, it will make her feel important and show that you really care about what interests her.

Make fun of other people. That gets the conversation going. It gets the spotlight off you and puts it on other people.

Don’t share too much on the first date. I don’t need to know that you’re on Prozac. I don’t need to know that you were in foster care. I don’t need to know that your mother died when you were 14. Stick to the shallow stuff on the first date. We can get deeper as the relationship goes on.

The one thing you never want to do on a date is to bring up past relationships. Good or bad, the other person really doesn't care. This is a date; it should be fun and relaxing – not about past relationships or establishing a relationship. Get to know the other person – his likes, dislikes, hobbies, the job and what he does. Don't ask how much he makes, how many children he has, how many sexual partners. Just have fun and avoid the stress. Life is stressful enough.

My mom set me up with one of her friend’s sons. He was cute in a Farmer-Brown-Meets-Tom-Cruise sort of way. He had a funny little cowpoke accent, but I decided to go with it. After about 45 minutes, I asked him what he did for a living. He then proceeded to explain to me the art of bashing in a pig’s head: He worked at a pig slaughtering farm. I had been a die-hard vegetarian for four years. Needless to say, our first date was our last. To this day, I think my mom set me up with the guy to cure me of my crazy vegetarian ways.

Know your escape route. When I was set up on my first blind date, I asked my sister and her husband to go to the same restaurant and eat a few tables away from us, just in case. My sister and I had a code signal – I would make eye contact and tug my earring if things weren’t going well. She would then call my cell phone and tell me I had to go because I had a friend from out of town at the house who wanted to visit me. Fortunately, our system worked when my date too a bad turn!

I can’t decide if it’s better to have something planned that you’re going to say when you first see the person – like, “These blind dates make me so uncomfortable!” – or just wing it. If you have something planned, you run the risk of sounding like a rehearsed fraud. If you don’t have something planned, you might find something funny to say, but you might say something stupid, like, “Boy, it’s a hot one! And you’re hot, too!” Anybody have some advice on this?