Not A Good Start
So, I’ve got a lunch date tomorrow…
I’ve been on Match.com for a while now, but I haven’t really persued anything since LK and I dialed back into “friend mode”. I just haven’t been all that interested. And, money has been a little tight. Well, at least before I knew that check from my lawyer was on the way. Oh, sure, there’ve been the odd profile or picture that makes me think, “Hmm, yeah, I wouldn’t mind getting to know her a whole lot better.” Or, even, “Gee, I wonder what name she’d slip and call me in a moment of passion? Todd? Scott? Barry?”
Anyway, this girl from Match “Winked” at me, so I sent a short e-mail back. E-mail went back and forth for about a week and we’ve spent the last week working out a date this weekend. It took about three or four e-mails before I could tell for sure that she wasn’t actually reading my entire e-mail to her. Not the best start. I mean, the e-mails were only five or six sentences long, so it doesn’t seem like a huge challenge to actually, you know, read the whole thing. Especially when I wasn’t wasting words and asking simple questions like, “The Guardian doesn’t open until next week, is there another movie you’d like to see? Oh, and any thing I should avoid in particular when choosing a lunch spot?”
I don’t know, maybe the fact that she only answered the second of those two questions was a clue that she didn’t really want to do a movie at all, but why not just say so?
Here’s how it went. First, I suggested an afternoon movie. Her response was that it was “a little hard to get to know someone” in a movie. Okay, valid point. I had intended to suggest getting a bite to eat after the movie, assuming everything went well. So, I said as much and suggested that we just go ahead and plan on it. She agreed and we started talking movies. Then, in the middle of one of those exchanges, she writes that she would rather get lunch before the movie, to make sure we get along before we sit through a movie together. Again, perfectly valid point of view. Except, if we went to see the movie first, we’d have at least that much to talk about afterward. Then, she doesn’t like any of the movies playing but is stuck on this one movie, The Defender, which we’ve already established doesn’t open until next week. Ultimately, I mentioned that three times in three different e-mails before we got around to considering a different movie. And, then she hits me with “so you’re set on an early movie?” And, you know, I wasn’t, really, but she agreed with me all week long that this was what we were going to do until Friday night when it became an issue.
After walking away from the computer long enough to find the humor in the entire situation, I sent her back ” Hey, since the movie thing is getting to be a challenge this weekend, why don’t we just meet for lunch tomorrow? Have a favorite place?” Which got me what I should have either asked for or offered ten half-read e-mails previously: a phone number. Naturally, when I called, I got voice-mail.
But, we finally connected and are meeting for lunch, at noon, Sunday. But, you know, I somehow doubt this is going to get very far. I mean, so far, she can’t be bothered to read an entire five sentence e-mail or just come out with what she wants to do when I ask her. Neither bode well. And, before I take any critisizm for not taking a firmer lead, I did, but she obviously didn’t want to do what I was suggesting. In spite of popular opinion to the contrary, I’m a pretty flexible guy and what we did really wasn’t that hugely important to me. If all she wanted to do was meet for lunch, that would have been fine. Instead, we danced around for a week, accomplishing little other than making me frustrated and quite doubtful. Still, I’ll go through with it because; a) I might be surprised and really enjoy her company and b) the only way to get out and meet people is to, well, get out and meet people. I’ll let you all know how it turns out.
And, I bet my faithful readers thought I was going to recap my last therapy appointment from Thursday night. Ha! Maybe some other time!
