Billy Joel once sang "The good old days weren't always good and tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems."

By the time you read this, the brand-new Mrs. Moyers and I will be sitting on the sunny beaches of Florida with mai tais in our newly-ringed hands. For six days we're leaving Cape Girardeau far behind, along with the fresh remnants of our forever extinct single lives.

But here, as I write this, two days before the wedding, I can't help but nostalgically ponder my life as a single man. Which is nice work if you can get it.

Dating is, without question, the best part of being single. But, like I am with pretty much everything, I was a slow starter.

The events of my dating career actually began in college. High school was a vast dateless wasteland for me.

At Cape Central, from the years 1988-90, I couldn't PAY a girl to go out with me. (OK, maybe I did once but my attorney pleaded it down to a misdemeanor.)

I'd say, "You want to go out?"

Her face would light up immediately, "Sure," she'd say. Within seconds, however, her face would cloud over as the dreadful realization came to her.

"Oh, you mean with YOU. Yeah, right," she'd say sarcastically and then add, in true '80s fashion, "As if."

Whoever said it's a cruel world surely figured high school girls into the equation.

It has been suggested to me by tactless factions of my family that part of the reason girls found me so unattractive in high school may have had something to do with my hair.

I have been cursed with the course, thick, curly, wiry, kinky, kind of awful hair that pretty much destroyed any chance of dating I might of had. Maybe it would have looked better if I kept it neatly trimmed like I do now. Maybe not.

But popular trends are defined by popular culture. And in 1987, the prevalent bands were White Lion, Van Halen, Whitesnake, ZZ Top and other long-haired monsters of rock that make us cringe today.

But we honored these groups then by wearing black T-shirts with their names on them and letting our hair grow ridiculously long. After all, these band members were perfect role models who had earned our utmost respect by ingesting large quantities of drugs as often as possible without dying.

All of this resulted in my hair pretty much looking like I had shaved my head and bought a wig made with a hundred feet of copper wire. I even cut myself on its sharp edges a couple of times while combing it with a garden rake.

And after a haircut, which took wire cutters, my family would bind it all together and clean out the bathtub or sand down dressers with it.

My family said my hair may have been part of the problem, but it was only a part. Add onto that the fact that I had horrible vision and that makes for one homely student. My vision was so bad it forced me to wear glasses with lenses so thick one girl jibed: "I can see the future through them."

See what I mean about high school girls being cruel?

But, fortunately, college life was better. After a haircut and contact lenses, I was still no Don Johnson (remember it was the '80s). But college girls aren't as discerning as ones in high school.

So I dated a few girls here and there, and there, and here, and over there. It was great. And I never dated girls for very long.

Inevitably, she would get bored or I would get broke and then she was out the door.

But I didn't mind. It was all part of the game of dating. Which is what dating is, a game. And that's exactly why I'm glad I'm not playing anymore.

It kind of gets old as we do; all of us realize this at some point. While I might look back on the past fondly, sometimes, it's never as exciting as the future.

This has led me to one conclusion: Single life was good. Married life will be better.

~Scott Moyers is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.