"Dumpster Dating"

Dumpster dating, have you ever heard that phrase before? I hadn't until a few days ago. I belong to an Internet group and one of the members was talking about someone dating a skanky girl. And that's when the term dumpster dating was used. It isn't a nice thing to say about someone but in a few case it is what truly applies

We have all had friends who have toppled head over heels for the wrong guy or the wrong girl. I knew a girl who was just the nicest person in the world but she had this thing for bad boys. I mean her radar could hone in on them from a hundred miles away. She dated drunks, druggies, morally polluted guys and she always seemed in shock when they broke her heart.

Her best friends tried to talk to her, her parents tried to reason with her, her pastor even got into the act; but she was oblivious to anything and everything that was said to her. Her favorite phrase was "the heart knows what the heart knows." I didn't even know what that meant but she took it to mean that you follow your heart no matter where it leads you. In her case it was down the road to destruction.

Eventually this girl married one of these dumpster dudes and had a couple of kids. She finally got the message of what a loser he was when he beat her up in front of the kids. She did leave him then and moved back home. She raised her kids and has had a fairly happy life. But it is a life alone. After a series of losers she no longer trusts herself to make wise choices.

The question is, when a person is dating someone you know is bad for them should you speak up. I have known parents who choked on their tongues from not speaking up. In some instances their silence paid off and their child came to his/her senses. In other cases they saw their child go into a terrible situation.

In one specific case I remember the parents voiced their opinion and their daughter still married the guy. The families stayed estranged because the guy could never forget what his in-laws had said. Maybe in that case they would have been better off biting their tongues.

In another case the parents constantly harassed their son about the girl he was dating. They didn't say he was dumpster dating, they just said she was trash. Eventually they did persuade him to drop her. But the next girl he dated was even worse - and he married her.

To speak or not to speak that is the question. Fortunately I have perfect daughters in law so I never had that problem. Plus to my knowledge I never dated anyone of whom my parents didn't approve. Still there might have been some parents out there who didn't want their daughters dating Jackie Cooper. I just hope they didn't say I was a "dumpster date."
 

 

 

 

 

©2007 Jackie K. Cooper

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