You Can Never Be Too Careful...

Writing that post earlier tonight about my police officer husband and his love for buying gadgets for his work put me in an oddly sentimental mood. I've spent the last half hour or so remembering how I first met my husband (online!) and what it was like getting to know him through email and phone calls before I finally agreed to our first date, six weeks after we first made contact.

I'd done the whole blind date thing before. I'd done the pick up a random guy in a bar or a restaurant and then go on a spur-of-the-moment 10-day vacation with them to California thing before. (I'm not kidding.) I done the met a guy in the elevator at work and then endure two miserable meals before escaping thing. What I'm trying to say is that up to and including Chris, I've had interesting adventures in dating.

But even though my friends still believe that I'm nuts and God only knows what my family things of me - they're still scandalized that I moved to Texas SIX years ago! - I've always played it very safe while dating.

How's that, you say, when I was obviously crazy enough to pack up and spend 10 days in San Diego with a guy who I'd spent a grand total of 6 hours with, two weeks before that trip? How's that, you say, when I was so willing to jet off to Daytona (it's Daytona, for God's sake, and it was bike week) with a guy more than twice my age?

Easy. With each and every one of those guys, I got online and ran complete background checks before I committed to anything wild and crazy. With the power of the internet today, it's possible to know more about someone else than they may even know about themselves within a very short amount of time, and for less than what it costs to fill your car with gas! Now, you could spend all of your time over countless days and weeks trying to track down everywhere someone else had lived, worked, and played...or you could work with a terrific organization that is certified by the Better Business Bureau, whose only focus is to run criminal background checks in order to gather the information that you need to make informed decisions about the guys you date, the employees you hire, or the people you hire to take care of your home or children.

With SentryLink's National Criminal Background Check program, you get results in around a minute, tapping into millions of databases in that time. Whether it's crime reports or sex offender listings, you can find out what someone else may be trying to hide. All you need is less than twenty bucks, the name of the person you're investigating, and their date of birth. How easy of that? Twenty dollars is a pittance to pay to ensure your own piece of mind - and that's why I've run checks on so many of the guys I've dated. There just isn't a price I'd put on my own security.

I was lucky - when I ran criminal checks on potential beaus, I never had information pop up that was negative. One of my oldest friends in the world was not so fortunate. She got involved with a guy a few years back who lived in Texas - she lives in Pennsylvania. Things got all hot and heavy with their sporadic visits, and she finally spilled the beans and told me all about him. What she was saying didn't exactly add up in my head, so without her knowledge, I went ahead and decided to run a background check on the guy. It was with a very heavy heart that I had to take information back to her that he was already married and had a murky past. If she'd only done a check at the get go, she could have avoided a lot of heartache in the long run.

I've been accused of being crazy; some have called me paranoid; but I just like to think that I'm safe. That's why I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that I would have nothing to fear when Chris picked me up for our first date...and I'm ever so glad that he did!