Internet Dating-An Update.

It has been about two weeks since I threw my profile up on match.com and as promised, I am providing an update. Like most people, I was very skeptical at first. It isn’t that I didn’t believe in the process, it is pretty simple. It’s like classified ads for single people, which is brilliant. I really do not understand why anyone who is even remotely interested in meeting someone doesn’t try it. If you were trying to sell your house you would advertise it. You write something flattering about it like; new roof, great neighborhood, or lots of original charm. Then you take some nice pictures that make the rooms seem spacious, the kitchen functional, and the back yard great for entertaining. Most of the time we hire professionals to do all this for us. Why? Because buying and selling a house is a big deal and you can’t expect to walk into a bar and meet someone who is in the market for just your kind of house and is pre-qualified. It doesn’t happen, but we think we can find “the one” that way. Isn’t who we spend the rest of our life with a big deal too? 

I know that if I look on realtor.com I’m not just going to find the sad houses, next to the train tracks, in need of a little TLC. I’m going to find the sweet farmhouse, the practical home in the suburbs, the cozy cabin on lake, the shiny loft downtown, and the stunner with a view. So why do we assume that anyone who is on an internet dating sight is some sort of social-retard who doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of finding a date out in the real world? I knew that the whole online matching had evolved, but I really did not expect to see what I saw. In the beginning, I’m sure there were mostly guys with a nose whistle courting us from their Mom’s basement, but we’ve come a long way, baby.

In two weeks, my profile was viewed 492 times and I have received 50 emails. So just over 10% made contact. I can assume that the other 90% were not interested or as like to believe, just shy. I quickly discovered why these men were on this site. Here are just a few reasons …

They are on Match.com because…

1)      They work in a male dominated industry.

2)      They have been a little busy serving our country.

3)      There were no attractive women on the top of Mt Kilimanjaro.

4)      They have been pre-occupied immunizing orphans.

5)      They put their wife through law school and she left them for someone at the firm her first week on the job. True story.

In reading the emails I discovered that many guys were quick to offer a diatribe and give me a glimpse into not only their lives, but their souls. Many were very touching and I realized that this is why I don’t go to the Humane Society because you want to give every dog a home. If you do this, you will quickly find yourself on the TV show, Animal Hoarders and need to get your carpets replaced too often. These were humans who I’m sure were house broken, but also heartbroken.

There is this feature that match.com calls your Daily 5 where they suggest five people who might be a match. They don’t know me very well and on a daily basis I deleted all five. Last week, one seemed intriguing so I clicked interested. When you do this, I discovered that they are notified. I got an email from the one who I was apparently interested in and we chatted back and forth for a while and then exchanged phone numbers. At that point, we texted until my thumbs were sore. No LOL’s. Bonus. The next evening we spoke on the phone for an hour and 44 minutes. I wanted to view his profile again, but knew that he can see every time that I do. I didn’t want to seem like a freak so I decided to see if he had a facebook page. And so the stalking began. The internet has really changed the face of stalking. Gone are the days of the drive-by or hiding in the bushes. It is fabulous. There were a ton of guys with his name so I began looking at profile pictures to see which one it could be. I found it! A gorgeous, tall, blonde who looked just like Kirk Herbstriet standing next to an old man. Kirk Herbstreit is the only reason why I watch College Game Day and I thought it was sweet that his profile picture was him with his grandpa. Attractive and sensitive. I clicked on his picture and realized that it was the facebook page of an old man who happened to have his picture taken with Kirk Herbstreit. Shoot.  I dug a little deeper and found him. I pawed through his pictures like any good cyber-stalker would do and I liked what I saw. There were pictures of him camping with his son, a video of him in Iraq, goats, chickens, postings about his successful honey harvest, and some apparently from the cock pit of an airplane. I muttered things like, “oh, how cute”, “how are you single?”, and then I may have tried to growl like a tigress but I’m pretty sure it sounded like I had phlegm in my throat.

The next afternoon it was decided that we would meet for happy hour at the Ram. There was only one problem. I looked like crap. I didn’t have time to go home so I showed up at the door step of my best friend. My suspicions were correct. She told me my outfit was not flattering which I know meant that I looked fat. She offered me a curling iron and started pulling clothes out of her closest. She got me presentable and I was off.

I walked into the Ram and began spanning the room for Mr. Wonderful. There was no one sitting alone and nobody who looked like they were as nervous as I was. And then I spotted him. The music stopped, the heavens opened, and in slow motion, a stunning man walked towards me. I sucked in my stomach and looked behind him for a nose whistler. None. It was him. We sat down and he ordered an IPA. I said something stupid like, “Oh, I love IPA”. If he had ordered a cat poop sandwich, I probably would have said, “Oh, I love cat poop sandwiches.”  We talked and talked and by, we, I mean I talked and talked. I tend to do that when I’m nervous or awake. I prattled on about the book I was reading to my children and how it took place in Newfoundland and how they talked funny there. He listened and when I finished telling him all that I knew about Newfoundland, he simply said, “Yes, I know, I have spent a lot of time there.” Well of course you have. Before I said anything else ignorant, I got up to use the restroom and ran into our waitress at which time I lost my balance and put my hand on his shoulder to keep from falling.  Hmmm, somebody’s been working out. I went in to the bathroom, checked myself out in the mirror and did a happy dance.

We went out one more time and sat for hours talking. I tried to listen better this time, because his life really was more interesting than mine. Besides its just good manners. We took turns reading Trivial Pursuit cards to one another and I seemed to get all the hard ones. I suppose if I had known the answers, they wouldn’t have been so hard. He got all his correct and when I was wrong, he told me the right answer without having to flip the card over. Whatever, smarty pants.

Yesterday we went out again. This time we were going to make dinner at his house. He had a few errands to run before and invited me to ride along. The first stop was at the local Red Cross. Of course it was. The next stop was a meeting at a high school to discuss its alternative fuel program. Well, sure. Everybody does that on a Thursday. I stood there and listened while they discussed Bio-diesel and used words with a lot of letters. I tried to follow along, but it was beyond my level of comprehension. Four quintessential high school nerds looked on and hung on his every word like he was a celebrity. They stood there all pimply faced in their safety glasses, just listening to him like he was some sort of geek-God. I stood there looking at him thinking he was pretty and he looked nice in blue. When he was finished, we ran to the car in the rain which, not surprisingly was a black Mercedes run exclusively on Bio-diesel. Of course it is.

We got to his house and I was now looking like a drowned rat. I called my mother to let her know of my plans and she said, “How do you know he’s not a serial killer?” I peered into the kitchen and he was holding a cork screw. Just opening a bottle of wine. “Really, Gretchen, he could be a psycho.” I looked around the corner again and now he was holding a large knife. Just chopping garlic. As my mother continued to fret, I pretended to listen and checked out his many books on the book shelf. No wonder he waxed me at Trivial Pursuit. I hung up with my mother and then his phone rang. I stayed in the other room to give him privacy as he spoke to his son. I sat on the bench at the grand piano in front of a large picture window. I admired Portland’s city lights and as I watched a boat go by on the river, I eves dropped. He spoke calmly and sweetly to his teen-age son while trimming the fat from the chicken and I exhaled.

During dinner I made some comment about how cute it was that the miss-fit boys seemed to admire him. He then told me that it may have been because he used to be one of them. I had a hard time imagining that this man who really does look like Kirk Herbstreit (yes ladies, you heard me right) was ever a nerd. He is now a strapping 6’2” which apparently didn’t happen until after high school while he was in the Air Force. I thought about how I had crushes on the “captain of the football team types” in school, who never gave me the time of day because I was the “play the violin, cow milking type”.

On my drive home, after doing another happy dance, I pondered this. Not everyone reaches their full potential in high school and in the end it is the nerds who rule the world and now I have the great honor of spending time with one. Generally speaking, they are the ones who own successful businesses, write best-sellers, are concert pianists, and win Oscars. I’m sure that when a cure for cancer is found, it will be by the kid who today sits alone in biology. I didn’t get asked to prom and I remember being devastated. There were times that I sat alone in the cafeteria dodging spit balls from a table of letterman jackets. I’m sure Mr. Wonderful has stories like these and had I let him get a word in edgewise, he may have shared them with me. It is such a joy to date after we’re grown up. We know who we are and what we want and our dates do too. You don’t have to ask them “What do you want to be when you grow up?” because you know. You don’t have to wonder if they will be a good father, because you can tell that they already are. We get to see the finished product and we are mature enough to recognize Mr. Wonderful when we see him. Of course, we are never too mature to do a happy dance. Wink.