One morning when I checked my online-dating emails, I discovered that one man and I were a 97 percent match! His profile picture showed a nice-looking man with dark hair and a mustache, rather lean and with a broad and bright smile on his face. He had a wonderful profile. Another one of his pictures was with his two young adult children—both college graduates and nice-looking. He wrote with a sense of humor. I liked that.
And he was divorced. Twice. And had just ended a long relationship. I didn’t think I liked that! I had to read it again, because that seemed like more baggage than I wanted to handle. How could something that major count as only 3 percent of our nonmatching?
But for some reason, I continued to read more about him. The more I read, the better he actually sounded. I began to wonder if the divorces and breakup weren’t his fault. It would be the kind thing to do to give him the benefit of the doubt. It must have been Fate, because later in the afternoon that I read about him, he sent me an email saying he’d never gotten a 97 percent match before. If I wasn’t already seeing anyone, he wrote, would I like to correspond with him for a bit?
Would I? This guy was exactly on the same wavelength as I was. We started exchanging emails almost as fast as one was read.
Our similarities were amazing. He’d grown up on a farm just fifteen miles south of my hometown. A flurry of emails followed where we each talked about our hometowns and subsequent places we lived.
Like me, he was the oldest of six children. He only had one sister and the rest were brothers, but we’d had the same problems being the oldest and having to live with younger sibs. It appeared that both sets of our parents must have been simultaneously telling us that we were the role models and had to set good examples for the younger family members! Geesh!
His favorite pet had been his pony. (Could this get any better?)
Yes, it could. He owned his own business, and his income was “comfortable.” Not that being rich was my number one priority in a date, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt.
We both liked looking at clouds and stargazing. We both seemed to have the same values, not counting the number of marriages. This was fun, having a fairly rapid-fire conversation through email. Reading them, re-reading them, I couldn’t believe how lucky I was to have “almost” met a guy who seemed to be so perfect in so many ways. Hey, this electronic match-up stuff really did work!
I was intrigued. And then he started to flirt with me. Oh, the advantages of email! I could scrutinize each one he sent me and answer him back in kind, I hoped! Sometimes I just used the smiley-face emoticon, or maybe the winking one. Cleverness had never flowed so easily from my fingertips to a keyboard before. He was on a roll, too. His emails were gentle little flirtations that I printed off and saved as carefully as if they were love letters.
He thought I was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. I confessed that my picture was three years old—but hastened to assure him that my children swore I hadn’t changed a bit! He confessed he was trying to break a smoking habit and was afraid he would succeed only if someone kicked him in the behind. I volunteered.
After about twenty-five emails back and forth, we both noticed it was getting late, so he signed off with a final email for the day: “Me and Becky sitting in a tree, K-I-S-SI-N-G . . . ”
I must have been worn out from all the emails, because normally I would have looked at that, thought, “What a weirdo!” and gone on to the next possible date. Instead, I was enchanted. No man had ever written me a poem before, even a cheesy take on a children’s taunt. This man was nostalgic, sentimental, and sweet.
I’ve heard through the years that too much time on a computer can damage brain cells. Studies have apparently shown that as humans age, our brain cells begin to die. Studies have shown constant exposure to chemicals (as in hair dyes) may cause brain cell damage. I was three for three on the brain-damage scale. I was pathetically doomed. Or crazy. Totally demented, the small part of my brain that was still functioning normally said. Nah—I banished those thoughts immediately and went with the nostalgic, sentimental, and sweet ones. I should have listened to myself.
The next day was much the same. Back and forth we typed to each other. I started to remember hearing how people fall madly in love before ever meeting in person because they are captivated by each other through writing. Wasn’t that the way the writers Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning had met? Wouldn’t that be awesome if someday this man and I were on a commercial for electronic dating, telling about how we fell in love before we even met, thanks to cyberspace?
Like the ads on TV that show a normal person and the same person as a creepy alter ego, I became normal “me” and creepy juvenile “me.” That’s how addicted I became to all these emails. I realized I needed to take a deep breath and slow down. I needed to get back to work, for heaven’s sake—my office break had been over fifteen minutes ago! So I told my email suitor I needed to close down for a while. He apologized, and told me he really needed to get back to work, too. Ten minutes later—ding! Another email from him. He missed me, he said, and he hadn’t even met me!
It was like passing notes in a classroom. I felt like I was sixteen again—and I hoped the teacher didn’t catch me wasting time that didn’t belong to me. Feeling guilty for looking at personal email after my break had ended, I worked extra through lunch. Sin was cleansed!
At home, I had my computer all to myself, and he had his, too. After we’d been emailing each other for four days, he gave me his phone number, and asked if I would like to meet him the coming weekend. Of course! In my reply, I gave him my full name, and asked what his last name was. He responded with suggestions of what to do on a Sunday afternoon, all sweet and all sounding like a wonderful first date. It was my choice, so I picked a meeting at a park and an early dinner afterward, and then asked for his last name again, in case (like my Cheesecake Factory date), something were to come up.
Again, I got a chatty email. We bantered back and forth, and then it was time for bed and a sign-off for the day. As I got ready for bed, it occurred to me that he hadn’t told me his last name, even though I’d asked for it at least three times. As Scooby Doo would say, “Ruh-roh!” But maybe he’d just been so excited that he’d missed that part of my email. So I went to sleep. I’d just email him again in the morning.
One thing that was not on my profile, and that I don’t make a habit of telling my prospective dates, was that I was a worrier. I worried about the weather. I worried about getting to places on time. I worried about my kids, my grandkids, my job, world peace—you name it, I’ve worried about it.
So it was not unusual for me to wake up constantly through that night worried that this 97 percent match was too good to be true. That last name omission was a red flag—heaven knows that in all the Googling I’d done while participating in this kind of dating, I’d read plenty of warnings about what to watch out for to protect oneself. While it would have been easy to dismiss it, failure to answer a direct question was one of the warnings.
The first thing I did in the morning was fire up my computer and pretend I was a teenage Nancy Drew. Yes, everything would be fine, I was sure, but so that I would quit worrying, I would do some actual sleuthing—just like my childhood heroine!
The adult me was soon thrilled to discover that I could do a “reverse phone number” check. Aha! Here was my date! And his last name. Next step was to Google him, and . . .
Hooray! He was who he said he was! He was a businessman, he was on professional sites, he was a Chamber of Commerce member, and woo-hoo! He was rich! A six-figure income! Phew! I guessed if I had an income that large, I wouldn’t want strangers to know how rich I was, either. At that point, I was so relieved that my new friend was legitimate that it wouldn’t have mattered if he were a pauper. My worries were for naught.
I was just about to sign off to get ready for work, when I noticed his name in another article down at the very bottom of the page. I scrolled down, clicked on it . . . and there he was.
Only this time he wasn’t smiling or looking directly at the camera. Either he was the world’s worst dresser, or that was an orange prison jumpsuit he was wearing! It took me an instant to realize the blackboard in his hands, with a series of numbers on it, meant jail. It was a mugshot.
Holy Schnikeys! Could I have been murdered? I have found in my “older” age that I can no longer ride roller coasters, tilt-a-whirls, or other fast and crazy rides like that, because I get dizzy and sick to my stomach. That’s exactly how I felt looking at that mugshot—totally sick. Forget 97 percent similarities! That terrible 3 percent trumped everything. I read the article over and over again until it sunk in. It seemed that the almost-perfect date had been arrested for domestic abuse. Well, what did I expect from someone who wrote such stupid poetry! At least it wasn’t murder, but . . . I began to get mad and madder, until I was so furious at almost being duped that I wondered what I’d look like in an orange jumpsuit—after being booked for manslaughter.
Then there was the matter of this picture. The mugshot, taken about nine months ago, was of a graying, scraggly-faced guy. While he still looked a little like the profile picture, he had to be at least fifteen, maybe twenty years older than the profile picture I’d been gazing at in adoration for almost a week. Now I thought of him with disgust and as some career criminal. Maybe like Clyde Barrow of Bonnie and Clyde fame. Idiot me! Well, as the saying goes, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” I had almost been conned. What did this guy, Clyde, think I was? Stupid, obviously. Well, he was right.
A million ways to teach Clyde a lesson raced through my mind. Confrontation chicken that I am, it took me about half an hour to screw up enough courage to actually do something. I finally picked up the phone and dialed his number.
A rather high, strained voice answered on the other end. I couldn’t tell if it was male or female.
“Uh, hi, Becky?” He had my phone number from a few days ago, so I knew he must have caller ID. He sounded nervous and scared. Maybe that’s why his voice was high.
I took a big breath and said: “Was there something you wanted to tell me before our date this weekend?”
“Oh.”
Yes, “oh.” That said it all. Clyde never apologized, but just started a lengthy explanation, starting with saying he’d wanted to tell me his past in person, on our date coming up. Wouldn’t that have been nice, getting hit with that bombshell in public? I thought.
He’d had a relationship with a woman for five years—he’d told me that in an earlier email—but, he explained, he hadn’t known she was an alcoholic. She would get drunk, steal things from him, and get into fights with him that she instigated. One night he kicked her out, and then when he left his house, she came back drunker than ever. She had fallen in the house, and called the police, claiming that he had abused her. Why, he whined to me on the phone, even the police who arrested him didn’t believe her.
He was innocent! The case was even dismissed without prejudice, which meant, he told me, that he was cleared! He would even give me his case number and I could check it out myself. To be truthful, I had already “checked out”—as soon as I’d heard his whiny voice. Maybe this mugshot was a blessing. But I played along.
“Okay,” I said, “what’s the number?” If he was bluffing, I was mad enough to call him on it.
He gave it to me. Then he said his picture shouldn’t even be public, and the only reason it was on the web was because some firm that posts mugshots of anyone who is arrested—innocent or not—demands a ridiculous amount of money to get it off the Internet, and he wasn’t going to pay it. A six-figure income, and he’d rather let his reputation be ruined than pay a hundred bucks? “Mr. Perfect” not only wasn’t perfect; he had poor taste, he was cheap, and he was a liar.
I told him I’d check out his story and get back to him, then hung up. As soon as I quit shaking, I thought, Now what? Checking out some probable criminal’s claim was way outside my comfort zone. Thanks to Google, however, I found out just how easy it was to do.
Clyde’s story was partially true. He’d only spent one night in jail, was released on his own recognizance, and the charges were indeed dismissed without prejudice. But “without prejudice” didn’t mean what Clyde told me it meant. After checking with a relative of mine who was also an attorney, I found that “dismissed without prejudice” means the person whose case it is (Clyde) can be tried again.
This time I emailed Clyde. Short, sweet, and to the point: Goodbye. I almost added, And, by the way, you’re a high talker and your profile picture looks stupid. (I am a teensy bit ashamed that I wanted to resort to name calling as though I were some angry child, but it felt good at the time, and I had been acting like an immature juvenile.)
Two weeks later, I was curious to see if this little incident had had any effect on him. His profile was gone and he was no longer on the site. Maybe I’d saved some other poor women from thinking Clyde was Mr. Perfect. When I started writing this book, I double-checked him again. There he was—same picture, same profile. But obviously he’d never found a ladylove.
You know, feeling smug can be a good sensation.