A running tally of the dates who hit the road

Poor Samantha Bonar. It seems like all the men she meets are either bad kissers or runners [“When Guys Who Were Hot to Trot Gallop Off,” Sept. 28].

While I cannot deny that I have known men who are “runners,” I have noticed that their likelihood of running is directly proportional to their good looks. Perhaps that is why women ignore the obvious signs that precede running.

Laura Nyro put this to music in the ‘60s with the song “He’s a Runner” when she sadly sang, “Why did you leave me and run off with tomorrow?”

However, this running behavior is not limited to men. One former girlfriend took me out for dinner on my birthday and then completely disappeared. When our paths crossed on a busy Seattle street corner a couple of years later, I asked her what had happened. “We were getting too close,” she explained.

This cannot compare with the long-term relationship that ended when I was told, “I’m not happy. I’m leaving. I have been seeing someone new, and she and I have a lot in common.”

PETER BOAM

San Pedro

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Samantha Bonar has presented ironic whipped cream as if it were venison. Her column seems to me to be about an experience of which she’s missed the meaning. I certainly pick up on and thoroughly enjoy her humor, and though I certainly don’t want to chew over what she’s presented, I have to point out one passage that contains a key to this allegedly mysterious male behavior:

“Your wary modern woman typically sees this guy as too good to be true, so it takes her a while to be won over. But just about the time when she starts to think, ‘Well, maybe this would be kind of nice’ -- which is generally at the exact moment she has invested in some new lingerie or bought the guy his own toothbrush to keep at her house -- the following scenario unfolds.”

Why would she be buying a toothbrush for any profoundly smitten guy if he hasn’t yet proposed to her? Is she knowingly inviting him just to shack up with her and then wondering why he afterward leaves to play the field?

Is she really baffled that he’s off to taste other flowers, once he’s presumably and so easily sampled hers? As anybody from a Restoration comedy playwright to the smug Dr. Laura is aware, men oftentimes don’t seriously value what they can get so easily.

STANLEY H. NEMETH

Garden Grove