EFORE IMET my husband, I had my share of dating “Toads.” This chapter is a summary of the relationships and dating encounters that I had with jerks that motivated me to choose interracial dating as an option. To all the “Toads” I have dated over the years, thank you for being such “terrific guys” because your actions prompted me to look in a completely different direction.Names have been changed to protect these “non-prince charmings” from being revealed.

Spencer was a loud-mouth guy I met in Bakers, a popular shoe store back in Cleveland, Ohio. Since I went to an all girls Catholic high school (Regina: Home of the Royals), finding a date for prom was an adventure. Spencer was cute, so I decided to give him a chance. We went out for a couple of weeks, and I decided to go to my prom with him. He actually ended up being an extra date for prom weekend because I already had someone to go with me to the formal and the cookout, but I needed a date for the outing. (Yes, I had two dates for prom weekend, but the lesson here is that quantity is not always better than quality. On at least one of those dates I would have been better off going solo.) The outing was Putt-Putt golf, where he behaved himself. Unfortunately, the evening took a nasty turn when we went to the local Pizza Hut afterward. It started with his loud mouth saying, “Why don’t they have any black people in the pictures on the wall?” He said it so loudly that everyone heard him in the restaurant, including the staff. Of course we were asked to leave, and I never went out with him again.

Kingston was a slacker, but one whoclaimed that he had very lofty ambitions. He said that he was attending barber school, but it never occurred to him to open his own business. He was a nice guy, but I always had to drive on our dates because he didn’t have a car. He gave me some story about how his driver’s license was revoked, and somehow his version of the story seemed a little shady. Nonetheless, I continued to date him. I really tried to make the relationship work until the night he tried to get in my pants and we had only been dating for a few weeks. We were still trying to get to know each other and it was too early to get physical at that point. He didn’t want to wait for me, so that was the end of the relationship.

Mickey had a great family background. We met at a club, so I was totally shocked that he was somewhat decent. After dating for some months, he invited me to go to Florida with him for a family reunion. Of course we had separate rooms so I felt safe. I needed a break for the summer, so I agreed to go with him on the condition that we go to Disney World or Epcot sometime during the weekend. I had gone to the Disney theme park many time