Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Ann Flips the Lid on Pandora's Box

It's Saturday night. I'm doing what any self-respecting single woman does on Saturday night--in other words, I'm on the computer. The phone rings. It's Anna Margarita de la Cruz.

"I just came from a wedding next door," she gushes. "The bride and groom met on Match.com four months ago. You gotta do it."

(Indistinguishable comments in the background from Senor de la Cruz result in an argument. They're not making Match.com look like a fruitful endeavor.)

But I hang up and think, what the hell? I could use a diversion from editing. So I click on over.

(Oh, sure. Let ME be your ginea pig.)

First, I browse. For you long-time blog readers, you may remember a similar experince months ago on the Yahoo personals. I quickly insert the smoking filter (yeah, yeah--I know) to whittle down the possibilities. Ha, the field goes from five pages of guys to four guys total, two with pictures, two without. It scares me to think what the two non-pictured might look like since the two sporting photos are scary enough.

These candidates quickly bore me so I decide to play with the profile questionnaire. Twenty minutes later, I've answered all the stupid questions and...I dunno...I guess because I CAN, I upload my own image.

Then it asks for money. Well, of course, I knew such a stellar service wouldn't be free, but somehow I hadn't expected to get this far. I peruse the three payment options, lose interest, and point my browser homeward.

So much for match.com.

A couple days go by. I get to thinking (dangerous, to be sure). It occurs to me that I've established a username, a password, a profile--hell, I've even uploaded photos--all under an email account I barely use.

I start to get a little nervous as I surf on over to the account.

Uh-oh. Three men have winked at me. Which is kinda concerning because I really didn't fill out that questionnaire as though someone would actually read it.

Turns out that although I can't contact match.com members, they can contact me, then I can look up their profile.

First wink lives on Whidbey Island, Washington. Seems like a nice enough guy--and who wouldn't love to visit Whidbey Island--but, um, kinda geographically undesirable, doncha think?

Second wink lives in New Zealand. Double ditto.

Third wink lives twenty minutes away but forgot to pay attention to my profile. Under smoking he put: NO WAY. He shoulda added Jose.

Now, along with these wink notifications, match.com kindly advises that it's polite to respond, even if you're not interested. Uh, no...not fallin' for it. I'm not starting up a dialogue with strangers who live frequent flyer miles away.

Still...my profile's up there...it'd be a shame to waste all that time I spent creating it...let's see what kinda fish the net drags in over the next couple of weeks, shall we?




1 comment:

John said...

(always helpful)

You could quit smoking and add a bunch of guys to your list.

You could make up with BJ. You seem to like him and he seems to like you.

Whidbey Island is a nice place. Between Whidbey Island and the whole state of California, I'd take the island.

You could turn all that frustration into a really good novel. (maybe you have)

You could stop blogging on Saturday night and then no one would know you are not out on a date.