Oops.

With all these magnificent dates you seem to be going on lately, there's one scenario we haven't considered yet: the date you want to get out of.

There are so many reasons one might want to get of a date. Oh, I've nothing to wear! Whoops, it seems I've scheduled our tira misu for the same time as my shiatsu. Dog ate your number?

So, what are valid excuses? Let's start right at the beginning. Not having anything to wear, having a less important but less nerve-wracking engagement, and your PDA not reminding you are all terrible, terrible excuses. Plan ahead: pick out an outfit and save it for the date, use your PDA so you don't double book, and leave yourself a post-it on the fridge if you're the type to forget important engagements. Agreeing to a date is a form of verbal contract, and it's one that's so potentially mutually beneficial that you should make it a priority. You are not allowed to cancel a date for any of these reasons. That simple.

You accidentally saw off a limb when your sister mixes big news with power tools. Your mother has a sudden coronary incident while you're driving her home from temple. The moon shifts in the night sky, causing your 24-hour werewolf syndrome to flair up.

All right. Life happens, and so do emergencies. Sometimes you can't call to give reasonable notice because your hand and the cell phone it was clutching are in the belly of a shark. Your date is ordering his second glass of wine, and he's going to really start hating you after half an hour, but there's really nothing to be done - except call when your hand is reattached. Do it - your date, assuming she believes you, will feel silly about cursing you to high Heaven after glass #3, and will more than likely take a rain check.

Ah, but then there's all the things that don't fall into the categories of nerves and life-threatening emergency. I don't want to go into to much detail, lest you start feeling than gnawing, vaguely itching, burning sensation some of us like to call guilt. You know, when you start thinking about how you don't really like the color of her hair or, on second consideration, his once-endearing laugh is really just a soul-crushing cackle. This may come as a surprise, although I hope if you've been keeping up it isn't - anything that happens between the time you say yes to swordfish on Saturday and the time you hand the keys to the valet is much, much to shallow of a reason to call off the date. You've said yes - you've made that contract - and your head isn't going to go flying into orbit if you spend an hour with him and determine that, in fact, his laugh could beach a baby whale.

Or maybe you think it would? You can't stand the thought of seeing the way she cuts her food into individual atoms, but you also can't stand the thought of actually making the call. So you...stand her up? May word spread like wildfire and your armpits be infested with the fleas of a thousand camels if you stand someone up. Letting someone go through the process of getting ready, scrounging at the bottom of their bag for that emergency Xanax and paying through the nose for a cab ride uptown only to discover that their date has gone deaf, dumb, and coward should be a felony. Date unto others as you would have them date unto you.

You know I don't care for rules, but I think a little...standard? of thumb might be in order here. Canceling a date should be like canceling a doctor's appointment: if you can't give 24 hours' notice, you should expect to pay.