She got out of her car and I knew it was her. She matched her description to a 'T'. She was even a few minutes early, which is a serious plus in my book. Fashionably late might work for a party, but not a date.
"Hi!"
"Hi!" She said with just a touch of shyness. I smiled and held my arm out. She took it and we went into the club for dinner.
Blind dates are always risky, but internet blind dates are the worst. You meet over a bunch of bits and bytes and try to establish a connection to the person at the other end of the network wire. It's not as easy as it looks. Sometimes you can smell a bullshit artist, but often you can't. Some of the clues include no picture posted, or all the pictures have the same background/outfit. An immediate call for sex, or sexual information, is also a dead give-away. I mean in this day-and-age, who is willing to jump into bed with someone they don't know? Only a lunatic, or someone already infected with various medical problems.
Of course, there are other concerns when you enter chat rooms and internet dating sites. Who knows if the person on the other end of the network cable is the person they are pretending to be? A friend of mine has a saying, "Get drunk and be somebody!" She used it for people who seemed to need alcohol to unwind and develop a personality. I see the internet as a way for too many people to 'be the person they always wanted to be.' I mean if your life sucks, or even if it just seems to suck, you can create a whole new person on the 'net. You can change height, weight, hair, eyes, even gender. Although I will never understand why old men pretend to be young girls! What kind of thrill is that?
There are also problems with illegal hookups, as a local police department seems to know on a regular basis. I swear once a week another guy trying to connect with a minor, boy or girl, got sucked in on a sting operation. Really pathetic and I hope they enjoy their jail stay.
But like any medium of communication, it is possible for two people, who may have never chanced to meet in any other way, to connect.
Her handle was TRINA, followed by a 5 digit number. The number was what first caught my eye. It matched a zipcode very close to mine that is if it was a zip code, TRINA might be a neighbor. Now that was interesting. As I pulled up her profile, I thought about the possibilities. There were so many people in chat that sooner or later you would find somebody close to you. The odds might not favor it, but it could happen. Could she be someone I know from work or school? That would be a riot, but if she sounds familiar, should I talk to her? My own profile contained a picture of me, so if she recognizes me, she might back away. Is it important if anyone knows I wander chat rooms? Naw, it's a hobby nothing more. The room we were both in was a regional room, not a sex room, so there is no worry about being here. Her profile came up and her number certainly was a zip code, from not very far away.
What was striking was the photograph! She wasn't young, but she was younger than me, maybe by 5 or 6 years, a blonde with a good smile. She had a face that spoke of experience, not a lifetime of beauty parlors and playing kissy-cheek with other women. She was gorgeous! But not in a conventional way, like the twenty-something girls try to create artificially. Her still photo spoke of a life of doing rather than watching. She had a light sunburn, and laugh crinkles around her eyes. A superb face! The rest of her profile supported my mental image; she liked activity rather than passivity. Liked motorcycles and movies, camping and even liked working. I bet her job is a physical one! Maybe a nurse, but not a schoolteacher! She looked good, and the profile sounded promising. I took the plunge and sent:
"HI,"
After a minute, she responded "HI NEIGHBOR."
She looked at my profile! Good deal.
From that tenuous beginning, we chatted and found a connection. We liked many of the same things, but even here we didn't intersect, we would talk about our differences from an exploratory rather than a picky point of view. The poor lass had never tried Guinness! Well someday perhaps! She did like Chili but wasn't into super spicy, and she smoked occasionally. Well, no one was perfect. But she enjoyed trading humorous stories and had a very pointed sense of humor. By the same token, I wasn't into motorcycles, even Harleys, so I guess I wouldn't be perfect in her book either.
Actually, despite our differences, we did find comfort in chatting together a bit several times a week. I smiled just seeing her online and we got to know each other as well as you can online. We also traded phone numbers after a while and spent several nights talking on the phone while we shared our day with each other. We were both moving in a slowly choreographed dance, that sooner or later we knew we would meet, but we weren't pushing each other. Things progressed over the weeks and we did manage to find a good time and location between our two homes to meet. A small sports bar. Nothing too loud on a Thursday night, but it seemed a good place to start.