Dating on the Internet

People ask me all the time what I think about Internet dating. I am not crazy about it for a number of reasons. It is to easy to fool people. You need to see how people behave over time. What are their spending habits, their hygiene? What is their work ethic? Are they true to their word? You can't determine these things through Internet chat.

And, of course, people post inaccurate pictures of themselves. A friend of mine named Tony created the character Busty Blonde Beauty in a dating chat room, with an appropriately gorgeous picture of "herself." Within hours he was getting marriage proposals.

Here is a hilarious account of the discrepancies between the fantasy and the reality of Internet dating. It is from the website: http://greenerpasture.wordpress.com:

The Craziest of the Craziest Dates
February 9, 2009
For some reason I’ve been on an unusual number of crazy dates. Maybe because I’ve always been an adventurous internet dater. Maybe because I’m just drawn that way. Whatever.

This one tops them all. It was my very first online date.

He was from London and had an amazing accent. We spoke several times on the phone and everything was peachy. He ended our last conversation with “I think you may have met you mate” (swoon) and said he was coming to the States to meet me.

At this point I should have realized he was nuts. You don’t fly to a different country to meet someone you’ve only spoken to 3 times. These days if I’m willing to go to a different section of the city, it’s a big deal…but I was young and idealistic and may have met my mate, after all.

So I pick up the bloke from JFK and immediately learned the first rule of online dating: People do not always look like their picture. Not that he was so terrible looking but I guess I just had a different impression…that’s all. So off we go.

We drive to the city and we’re headed down Broadway when he turns to me and says,

“Blimey! Is that a sunroof in your car?”

“uh-huh”

“Do you mind if we put it down?”

“sure. “

Not one second after my sunroof is fully open he sticks his whole body up through the top of my car and starts shouting and waving his arms.

” ‘ello New York City! ‘ello America! ‘ello! ello!”

Ok. I’m slightly mortified at this point, but the rational part of my mind is saying ‘He’s just one of those zany, funny guys. Stop being so uptight. Maybe this will be allright.

I park the car and he hops out, opens up his back-pack and take out a pair of roller blades. He’s like. “I just have to blade in New York City, man”. Gawd. I must have really wanted a date to have put up with this! This is like the first face to face conversation with him and he’s swooshing around me on the side walk, doing figure eights. And I’m like “So what’s your favorite color?” swoosh, swoosh. “Did you have a good flight?” Shwoosh. “DO YOU WANT TO GRAB A BITE TO EAT?”

So we roll into this cute little Japanese restaurant, glad to be on solid ground, glad to be in a chair. We both order big lovely bowls of soup, vegetables and noodles. The soup warms me and I relax and finally start opening up a little bit and talking. I look up from my bowl and he’s sitting across from me with a giant mung bean hanging out of his lip. I look down assuming it’s a mistake, and when I look up again he has 2 mung beans hanging out of his lip. This goes on and on with me trying to be polite and him adding mung beans to his lip until he looks like a giant retarded walrus, or like the worst date ever.

He looks at me with his full mung bean smile and say “wha’s wrong? wha’ were you saying? wha’s wrong?”

Now for all of my guys friend who think this is hilarious. It wasn’t. It might be funny like 4 months into dating, after a glass of wine or 3 but I assure you at this time and place the humor was somehow escaping me and I don’t recommend this as a first date breaking the ice tactic.

After our fab dinner he invites me up to the apartment where he’s staying. Ok. please don’t tell my Mom that I went into a private apartment in Manhattan with a crazy guy. But I did. and I’m sorry and I’ll never do it again. He asks me if I wouldn’t mind if he changes into something more comfortable, since he was wearing a suit to impress me. Obviously!

Well…long story short he goes in the back and when he comes out he’s wearing a speedo. yep. a SPEEDO!

And this is how sweet I am. I continue to ask him questions about himself. And he’s answering me and all that I can hear is “blah, blah, blah, SPEEDO, SPEEDO, blah blah blah”

He gets up and say to me in the blokeiest of bloke voices “Do you Like me Body?”

At which point my reptile brain finally kicked in and I was like .”um…I ‘ve gotta go”

and practically ran, roadrunner style back to Philly.

When I think back on this story, I’m like “really, REALLY Sarah! It took the Speedo to finally trigger you to get out of there.” If that’s the case. I’m toast. The only redeeming thing I could gather from this experience is that at least I would have this story to tell over and over , which was the only small comfort I could conjure up during the whole long drive home.

Oh, and for the record, Mr. Crazy Speedo British dude. I did not think the mung bean thing was funny.

-Cheerio, Sarah



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