2009-03-13
The New World
My friend Laura is a bright ray of sunshine. Her big doe eyes would break the heart of God. Every day she works alongside me is a gift.
But Jesus Christ she makes me feel old.
"I got a text message from J," she informed me this morning. J is a catering guy we both know. At a big splashy event earlier this week, Laura and J exchanged digits. Rather than CALL, J texted Laura last night, and she didn't know how to interpret this.
"You're asking ME? I have no fuckin' idea," I said.
Because I don't. I'm not "out there," and when I WAS, we didn't HAVE text messages. There's a whole new set of rules, and tools, as dictated by this Brave New World we live in now, and I can't even guess what it's like for you young singles. Well, maybe I CAN:
You meet someone. Like on Match.com, or, if you're cheap and not especially picky, MySpace. You send each other messages through your "service" of choice until you feel comfortable enough exchanging email addresses.
So you start emailing each other, and agree to actually MEET. Before you DO, you Google one another to make sure everything's on the straight-and-narrow and you're not meeting up with someone who maybe owes $76K in child support or makes some money on the side posing for jizzonmyfeet.com.
You meet in the agreed-upon well-lit, well-populated place. Hopefully you did not misrepresent yourself by posting a 15-year-old photo on your profile. If that's all well and good, you eat, you chat, you hit it off and decide to go on another date.
You become "friends" on Facebook or MySpace, unless you're the aforementioned cheap type, in which case you were already "friends." If things are going REALLY well, you change your "relationship status" so all your friends can post "OMG LOL im soooooo happy 4 u!!11!" And you leave little .GIFs of glittery teddy bears saying "I'm Thinking About You!" and shit on each other's pages. Hehehe!
But things don't always work out, you know. Maybe he's still "friends" with his ex-girlfriend and she leaves glittery teddy bears on his page, too. So you break up, and you change your "relationship status" again and all your friends post "OMG wut happnd r u OK?? IM me!!11!"
I mean, did I more or less get this right? Did I miss a step involving Twitter?
I pray that I never do wind up "out there," because I swear, I'll become a nun if this is what you have to do. Thumps cane indignantly. In MY day, you met someone in a bar, and if you liked him, you slept with him and if he liked YOU, you got taken out to breakfast the next day. Simple, clear lines of communication.
lisamcc at 3:03 p.m.
3 comments so far
vikkitikkitavi
2009-03-13 21:48:29
Girl, you do not know what terror is until you have been forced to re-enter the scene at 43, and you have to learn how to date via technology. At least the young kids grew up with it. When I went to college they were still teaching Fortran.
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Jess
2009-03-15 23:26:35
I don't know... my mom "re-entered" the scene at 62... and she's having a blast dating up a storm with various guys she's met online. I mean, how many guys have you "really" met at a bar? I was TERRIBLE at that since my idea of flirting is to completely ignore whoever it was I was attracted to and hope they asked me out.
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Tina
2009-03-16 01:31:29
Dude, I really enjoyed the "!!!11!" thing. If the guy texted her, though, I would say ignore him. Soft cock.
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