He'll cut me up and serve it to the local cougar that's loose?

I'm going to do something I don't normally do.

Reflect on one of the chat discussions from CM.

I'm 22. Let's just be honest here. While my college experience probably crammed in more mass and Jesus and praying than your average co-ed, it also consisted of more Sex & the City marathons than nights spent in the library. I used to post particularly good entries from my "He's Just Not That Into You" day calendar around my senior year apartment's full-length mirror for my roomie to enjoy. And you had better believe I was taking all of those dating quizzes in Seventeen magazine when I was a mere 13.

When it comes to the rules and regulation of dating play, I know my stuff. Which is why when certain dating topics pop up in the chat forums on sites, I typically don't reflect on my thoughts in a blog because a lot of the time, they're not very nice.

And often come down to the same universal statement.

"I can see why you're doing the online thing."

Not because I think the posters can't find someone to date in real life, but just because they don't seem quite as well-versed in typical dating behavior (such as when a guy asks you to attend his company Christmas party it's not because he wants to marry you-- it's because he doesn't want to be the loser without the date) as others.

This one though had me shaking my head.

This woman was having her concerns about meeting this guy in a face to face. They'd known each other for about a whole two seconds before he proposed the meeting (cue the chainsaws!) and while she had managed to slow him down a bit via chatting, email and phone, he was still coming on just a bit too strong. She was still meeting him-- in a public place, with all the proper precautions of course-- but was still a bit queasy about some warning signals. So she posed her scenario to the chat room and allowed the chatting sharks to have at it and dispense their advice.

Fine. Good. I myself don't know what I would've told her, so it was interesting to read other people's comments. And then I hit the, "Huh?" jackpot.

"What's the worst that could happen?" Some poster--let me clarify, male poster-- responded to her.

Um. Excuse me? What's the worst that could happen? Did you really just ask that? Have you been chilling out behind rose colored glasses in a tiny hut in the mountains for the past 10 years?

I can tell what the worst is that could happen. So could my friends. My coworkers. My parents. The writing staff of pretty much any crime television show could tell you. And they could do it with all sorts of fake blood and scary power tools. Just because you meet some guy on a Catholic site does not guarantee you that he's not going to try something absolutely terrible. The worst that could happen comes in all sorts of horrendous plot lines that TV stations in Milwaukee feast on. That's the worst thing that can happen.

As I used to repeat over and over to Seth whenever I posed the question to him, "So. Are you a serial killer?"-- safety first! Safety first! Safety first! And he always understood. That while he knew himself and his intentions with me and whether or not he had any desire whatsoever to cut me up into little bits, I didn't know that. And because of that, I needed to take safety precautions to ensure that at the end of the encounter I would still have a pulse. I had a right to be concerned for my safety, as does this woman.

So don't tell me-- "What's the worst that could happen?" That's just callous.