Because I am feeling better these days—basically recovered from a serious illness— I thought, why not turn my attention toward that other gender.  Since I do not have opportunity to meet men in real life, I thought I would try the virtual world—online dating.

It isn’t that much different from real life dating: one still has to kiss a lot of frogs.  Though I state in my online profile that I would eventually like to meet some of them, I haven’t met one yet that would surprise me enough to incite me to hop out of my very own small pond and into the big, real-time, dating pond.

So far I have moved from just viewing profiles to actually emailing and chatting online with a couple of them.  The first guy—who I will call Fred in order to protect his privacy and my life and bank account—seemed like a good prospect, initially.  He sent me a virtual teddy bear holding a yellow daisy.  I sent him a thank you email saying, “awww, that’s sweet”. 

Next came the online chat where I began to ask some questions.  This is where on-line dating is really handy.  I found out that he is a Park Ranger after retiring from a “fortune 500” retail career.  Who knows.

Then he answered the questions that I knew would make or break this back and forth between us.  It turns out that when he and his wife divorced 7 years ago, he moved 5 miles up the road, bought 8 acres of land and built his “dream house”.  Maybe it is just me but my “dream house” would not be built “5 miles up the road” from my ex-husband.  Call me crazy, call me a snob, call me cynical, call me anything you want, but don’t call me from my ex-husband’s house 5 miles up the road.

Religion even came into the chats whether I wanted it to or not.  He said he “would pray for me”.  I don’t recall typing anything that would require prayer, but I did know that I suddenly became curious and asked him if he belonged to a religion.  He sent me a URL for his church’s website.  He was a faithful follower of Christ. Because of my post Catholic cynicism, I rolled that URL up into a wad and tossed it into my trash bin.  Then I deleted him from my address book. 

Now I have gone back to viewing profiles and possess more insight into which profiles I can discard right away.  If they don’t drink, watch sports, laugh, have a sense of humor, or a sense of adventure by the time they are 50 years old, then I think they are beyond hope.  I mentally ask Fred to pray for them and hit delete.