Here’s a lesson in personal safety – when you find out a person’s last name. Google them. I know, it might take that fun mystery out of it, but let me tell you a story.

I met …  let’s just call him “Felony”  (I don’t actually remember his name) …  Anyway, I met Felony online. He lived a few hours from me, so we met at a designated half way point to have a couple drinks and play some pool. It was fun. We talked, laughed, I embarrassed myself with some horrendously bad pool skills, but he let me win anyway. He was a gentleman and things looked promising.

Felony and I actually made it to the third date and after a lovely evening of dinner and a movie down in Mass. (where he lived), I came home to my roommate giving me the “we need to talk” look.

Bless my roomie for being diligent in her research. She opened her MacBook, typed the guy’s name into Google and boom– mugshot. Felony had been arrested and charged with assault with deadly weapon and drug possession. We even found a couple news articles about how he broke into a house, shot at the person living there and stole a bunch of stuff. Classy.

Now, I wanted to give Felony the benefit of the doubt.  Perhaps he was going through a rough patch and was now turning his life around. I might have even gone on another date with him to talk through it, except the SOB never called me again. Didn’t answer texts. Nothing. Gone.  (Maybe he’s in jail? Maybe I was just too law abiding for it to work out. We’ll never know.)

Lesson learned: Get the person’s full name and Google that sh*t.