I dreamed I was in a bar with a friend - K.T., maybe? - and waiting for my family to finish whatever they were doing and come get me.

And this guy sits down at our table. He's a little on the short and heavyset side, but not bad looking and he orders drinks all around, so we let him stay, and pretty soon we're talking and having a good time.

"...But I've never been picked up in a bar or anything," I say.

"Darlin', what do you think I'm doing here?" he answers, and all of a sudden I realize his arm is wrapped quite snugly around my waist and his hand is on my hip.

I am both flattered and repulsed.

I used to complain that guys never hit on me. But I think it was just that I'm pretty clueless, because if I think back, I can come up with quite a few examples. Up to and including actual propositions that I thought at the time were jokes, but which I realized later were at least half serious.

One of the few I actually regret missing was in my freshman year of college. I'd gone with M. - who was at the time my closest friend - to SciCon. Because we had nothing better to do, we wandered into the Saturday night dance, and we wound up talking to these two guys. I have no idea how that happened, because M. and I were (are) both introverts, but that's what happened.

One guy, A., was very short - I don't think he topped 5 feet. The other was a hint over 6 feet. Both of them were pretty good looking, but A. was... hhhhot. Walking sex. Which, you have to understand, is pretty unusual for me, because I have a thing for tall guys. But A. was... Oh, my god. And charming, too.

M. was flustered, too - which floored me, because she was pretty much immune to romance. And I'd gotten in the way of her one high school crush, so I figured it was only fair for me to do what I could to get out of her way this time. (But damn, I wanted it to be me.) So when A.'s friend suggested we go see what was playing in the anime room, I made sure that I was sitting next to the friend, and M. was sitting next to A.

I wound up an hour or so later making out with the friend. Nothing sparked with M. and A., to my disappointment.

A few months later, the friend turned into my boyfriend, and he was my boyfriend until the summer before I went to grad school. Which is a shame, because I missed some great opportunities, and he was a really, really bad boyfriend. That last year, I ran into A. again at a party at my boyfriend's house, and he was a little drunk, and I was well past tipsy, and he followed me outside when I went out for some fresh air. And I said, "Do you remember when we met?" I think I was planning to ask him why he didn't hook up with M.

He said, "Yeah. We were both hitting on you so hard, and I thought I'd get you, but he beat me to it."

Ka-donk. I nearly fell over.

Should've gone with my first instinct, I guess. Because I don't think A. would've turned into a long-term romance. At most, he'd have been a few months and a lot of fun, and then we'd have broken up and I wouldn't have had to deal with all the angst that was my awful boyfriend.

And I wouldn't change my life now for anything. But I do kind of wish I could go back in time and knock myself upside the head with a clue-by-four on a few occasions...

--Liz