Charming, but single

On one of the first records I ever owned, a pre-Bobby Brown, pre-crack Whitney Houston asked, "How Will I Know?"

She was talking about a boy. She wanted to know if he loved her. And I remember thinking this was a lame song. Even as a young child, I thought Whitney Houston was pretty dumb.

"How could you NOT know?" I wondered. "It is LOVE."

I've always expected the butterflies. The stomach flip. I've felt these things for people before – the physical signs of a woman who is flush with emotion over a man.

But what about the others? The nice guys who for some reason don't make you weak in the knees as much as they deserve to? The ones who always return your text messages, who always open doors, who always comment on how pretty you look, who always sound excited to speak to you.

Do you penalize them for not wanting to vomit up your guts and feeling weak when you see them?

What about the ones who aren't so much afraid to let you into the little intimacies of their lives? When it feels effortless and you kind of just know things about them, like how they like superhero stories and save their ticket stubs from movies and always eat mushrooms in their omelets.

Do those things matter? And should they? Am I so obsessed with waiting for lightening to strike that I'm missing all of the little signs around me that are pointing me back to one of the normal guys in my life, about whom I think, "He's not the one, but he's one of my favorites."

How will I know, Whitney? I need to know, Whitney. Because I wanna dance with somebody who loves me.

Eventually, if not sooner.