Thursday, June 18, 2009

Cold Fusion

Written in November 2008

Heart break is painful. People have been going through heart break since the beginning of time, sure I have no proof of it, but as I know women, and I think I do, we have either been suffering from heart break or making others suffer from the beginning of time. This time though, I was the one suffering.

I had strange ways of dealing with my suffering. Instead of sitting around wallowing in my pain, and eating my depression, I decided to join an online dating web site. The first site that I joined was free. It had a totally cheesy name, and didn’t ask too many personality questions, but pictures were imperative. Now, I realize that I am more Drew Barrymore, than Heidi Klume, but Drew isn’t horrible looking, right? Luckily, I practically had a glamour shot from yearbook picture from my previous job that I had at the high school.

I got some hits, but most of the chat requests were from skeevy men who were far from gentlemanly! This method was certainly not easing heartbreak, in fact, it was making me wish for the ‘dude’ back that broke my heart. I needed a to try something else. While browsing the web one morning, I literally stumbled upon a website that looked hip, cool and it seemed to have credibility, so I jumped right in. It asked way more personality questions than the other website, already I felt better about this one. I took a great deal of time and care on my profile.

My use of sporting analogies would have impressed John Madden. (Look another one!) Again, I used my glamour shot yearbook pic and off I was, another online dating adventure.
This website was different though, it did not let you browse through the gentlemen, it matched you. Sounds cool right, NOT, it stunk, it only gave you ten men to look at per day. For a girl getting over a break up, those were not good numbers, I wanted men by the hundreds to assure me that there still were actually men out there. To be honest, more than half of the heart ache was caused by the debilitating fear of growing old alone.

Anyway, back to online dating, (something much more uplifting that growing old alone!). When presented with the ten men that this website provides, essentially, I was able to give each a thumbs up or a thumbs down. Once this was done, they would have to do the same for me. After that stage, meaningless priority scales are exchanged. An example of this priority scale was that I had to rate on a scale of one to ten how important humor, money, and religion were to me. Typically, when at this stage with a guy, I ignored all of that crap, just so that I could get to the email stage of the process. Communication either live or via email is what gets you to know people right?

So, I finally got to the email stage with one of my guys. I was so excited, I would be able to finally find out about this guy… heartbreak what? His name was Shawn, he was tall and slender in his pictures, so cute. One of his pictures was taken in Ireland, already I was impressed. Unfortunately, Shawn was not much of an emailer. He had a tendency to shoot rapid fire questions rather than exchanging a friendly email dialogue, I felt like I was on CNN Cross Fire. Ever the optimist, I kept the faith that perhaps he just wasn’t much of a typist. Over one of our emails Shawn asked if we could talk on the phone, I was estactic. I was desired, I was wanted, and now with phone time, I would be able to shine! He called me one night, I screened the call of course, then called him back. I was terrified. I hadn’t flirted with a guy in quite some time. What if I had forgotten, is it really like riding a bike? What does that even mean, I can only imagine what getting on a bike must feel like after not having done it in forever… TERRIFYING!

Surprisingly, I had something to say. We exchanged pleasantries about our work life, his being an electrician, mine in business. We talked about all the stupid stuff that you cover on a first conversation. At one point I started to notice myself getting a bit out of breathe, huh, that was weird, I mean, I do exercise. Had I really been talking so much that I couldn’t catch my breathe… the answer to that was yes. I had a major case of oral diarrhea. I paused for a minute to catch my breath and all that I heard was my breath. My oral sickness was due to the fact that Shawn wasn’t just afraid of the keyboard, but apparently his voice too!

Again, ignoring reason, I gave Shawn the benefit of the doubt. He was shy, he was nervous. Perhaps he would relax after a couple of conversations. Well a couple of conversations we had, he did warm up, a bit. He finally asked me out, after several conversations. Now, I was even more nervous, I hadn’t lost that relationship weight yet. I was going to meet up with a tall, slender, shy gentlemen at a tavern with no time to drop twenty pounds. Oh well, it was time for me to realize that I was the one dating, now, not twenty pounds from now.

Upon arrival at the tavern I found myself face to face with Shawn, four years older than his picture and forty pounds heavier. I no longer worried about my twenty pounds. So, I sat down, feeling somewhat betrayed, but figured a girl’s gotta eat right? Our conversation was slow, topics such as work and family were vaguely touched upon. I felt myself leading the conversation again, but not because I wanted to, but because without doing so, there would have been no conversation.

After ordering dinner, something that I did not want to, I prefer the first date drink only option, Shawn seemed to warm up and began talking. It was when dinner was served that he really began talking. Somewhere along the conversation journey the topic of alternative energy sources was brought up, not by me. I thought that I could keep up, I mentioned wind energy, and e-85, I thought that I was good.

Suddenly Shawn brought up cold fusion. What… cold fusion? The only thing that I could think of to add to the cold fusion conversation was about the movie The Saint. So, I basically, shouted, oh yea, they talk about that in the movie the Saint with Val Kilmer and Elizabeth Shue right? He looked as lost as I was. So, I tried to explain the plot, I even included character names, (shocking that I knew them yes, I went through a Val Kilmer stage). Shawn looked at me as though I had three heads, it was with that look that I recognized on my face when he was seriously talking about alternative energy sources. It was basically at that moment that I knew, there would be no date two.

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