Grace Kelly? Might as well have said Gene Kelly

A dolt. A rube. A nimrod. A nitwit. A dimwit. A doofus. A numskull. A moron. An imbecile. An idiot. A dummy. A witless wonder.

Not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Not the brightest crayon in the pack. One taco short of a Mexican platter. A couple of cards short of a full deck.

These are the types one may encounter if one chooses online matches by their photos without paying too much attention to their self-penned profiles.

I plead guilty. But I think I have learned my lesson.

In my brief adventure in online dating, I chose my “matches” by screening by “very good-looking,” the highest self-ranking, and glossing over the written parts. I e-mailed one very good-looking thirtysomething guy, and he wrote me back. His e-mail was brief, though, and he suggested we talk on the phone. So I called him.

I had set up an e-mail account with a fake name to e-mail this fellow. My fake name was “Grace Kelly.” But I signed my e-mail to him “Samantha.” So his first question for me when we talked on the phone was: “Is your name Grace or Samantha?”

“It’s, um, Samantha,” I said.

“Oh, I was wondering,” he said. “I was thinking, ‘Dude, what’s up with this chick? Is her name Grace or Samantha?’ ”

“Grace Kelly is a fake name,” I explained. “Do you know who Grace Kelly is?”

“No, who’s that?” he asked.

“She was a famous actress of the ‘50s and ‘60s,” I said.

No response.

“She was in a lot of Alfred Hitchcock movies, like ‘Rear Window’ and ‘To Catch a Thief’ and ‘Dial M for Murder,’ ” I said.

“Huh!” he said.

“She married Prince Rainier of Monaco and became Princess Grace,” I said.

“Hmmm,” he said. Then I think he started eating something. I could hear him chewing.

“So what was this Grace Kelly like?” he asked.

“She was a cool blond. Smart and sophisticated,” I said.

“Ah. Sophisticated,” he said between chews.

“So what’s your favorite movie?” he asked me.

“Well, I don’t really have a favorite, but I like classic movies from the ‘30s and ‘40s, like ‘The Thin Man,’ ” I said.

“Mmm,” he said. “My favorite movie is ‘The Matrix.’ I have an awesome DVD system. Do you work out? I work out, like, every day.”

The conversation just went downhill from here. I used the word “manifest” in a sentence, and my match was baffled. He ended every sentence with either “and stuff like that” or “but it’s cool.”

My left temple started to throb. When I got off the phone, I had to hold my head in both hands to keep myself from banging it against the wall.

At this point in my dating life -- thirtysomething and Internet trolling -- if I were a superstitious person, I would consider myself cursed and would be looking into voodoo cures involving dolls, eggshells and rooster blood. If I were a religious person, I would be saying Hail Marys and compulsively counting rosary beads. Being neither superstitious nor religious, I was forced instead to rethink my priorities.

Stupid is as stupid does. Perhaps my choices in dating material have not been too bright.

Perhaps I need to look a little further than skin deep. In addition to a pleasant exterior, does the guy have a brain and a heart, a personality and some character?

My propensity toward making dumb picks was brought home to me recently when I shared a quote by the 19th century German poet Heinrich Heine I thought was funny with my Texan friend Eve: “Ordinarily he was insane, but he had lucid moments when he was merely stupid.” Without skipping a beat, she replied: “Sounds like the men you date.”

Samantha Bonar can be contacted at [email protected].