Grammar Counts

Everyone who knows me, knows that I have a thing about proper grammar.  My friends have been trying to encourage me to be kinder to men as I don't know whether their use of "text speak" may be due to their lack of access to formal education and not a choice.  I really don't care what they say, this is too much:

this is so cliche but I knw on a constant basis u shutting dudes down who try to hit u up due to personal reasons via personal jugdement(assuming) but listen... Jus need some new people on my circle..im new to the albany area n i am looking for someone to have lunch wit.... Smoke buddies when im in town, some one to call/txt wen u need help a REAL PEOPLE... but im sure u sayin how am i different from any other male who hit u up... hate to boast and bragg so leme take u to out n u tell me wat u think.

I kid thee not!

Speech Impediments Impede Dating

By now, I have established that I am SHALLOW.  I want to be more oped-minded, but really, the heart wants what the heart wants, and I want someone tall, handsome, funny, smart...  AND more recently, and lately most importantly, no speech impediments.  By now, we all know the story, I meet a guy on POF.  He's cute, taller than me (but not my height ideal), meteorologist.  We exchange emails for a bit and then meet up for drinks.  The date starts off normal enough, we're at a wine bar, it's kinda loud, so I can't really hear him all that well, but I detect something is off.  A few minutes into the date, I ask him what his job actually is.  It seemed that the dating god has quite the sense of humor because at that very moment, there seemed to be a lull in every other conversation going on in the place, and he responds, "I'm a meteowaulogist for a pwivate waeva commpany.".

Wait, what?  Does this guy actually sound like Elmer Fudd?  I've heard of terrible lisps, but outside of Elmer Fudd on cartoons, Kripke on The Big Bang Theory, and this guy I went to law school with, I didn't know adults actually sounded like that.  It took every adult bone in my body, not to burst out laughing, pull out my phone and call my friend Chatt a/k/a the queen of disliking speech impediments.  I somehow refrained from excusing myself to go to bathroom and then sneaking out.  I attempt to tune out his outrageously funny voice and actually ended up having a fairly decent time.  At the end of the date, we made plans to meet up on the weekend.

Maybe, if I try really hard, I can pretend that he just has a really bad accent.  I know a ton of people with wretched accents (EVERYONE FROM BOSTON), but even I have to admit that  Boston accents are more pleasing than his lisp.  And not to be too judgy, but I had a lisp.  It was pretty bad.  My aunt used to call me in South America, from Tennessee, to tell her friends "Stop Fussing and Fighting", but my lisp turned all S's to K's.  It seems that a 2 year-old offering the sage advice of "Stop Fucking and Fighting", was HILARIOUS.  I would have likely continued on that path had my parents and cousins not worked with me and gotten me speech therapy to correct the issue.  Where were his parents with the speech therapist and even if they didn't help him then, he has to know that he sounds like a cartoon character.  As an adult, he doesn't want to do something about that?!

I kid thee not!

And along came Bizarro

I consider myself to be a fairly attractive person.  That wasn't always the case, but I have come to accept that not everyone is model beautiful and whereas I may not have the exotic beauty of my older sisters, I am beautiful by anyone's standards.  (Humble, too!)

 If I am guilty of one thing in my online dating life is that I am shallow and am likely to dismiss someone who I think is unattractive.  (SUE ME!)  In an effort to break this terrible habit, I have taken to getting the opinion of my officemates, Sweet Pea and Red October, on the pictures of the men that contact me.  I figure three sets of eyes are better than one, and even if they would gladly throw me under a bus for a good laugh, if someone was truly unattractive, they would not be able to endorse him without breaking into peals of laughter.  Thus far this system has worked and I have learned some interesting things about the science of profile (discussed in another post)!  An important rule is if someone is not willing to post a picture of themselves on a dating website, beware.

Profile description: 6'3", athletic, into hiking, skiing, boating, and cuddling.  In my opinion, Superman!  In real life, Bizarro.  Bizarro contacted me by instant messenger on POF.  Seemed very funny and despite his love of all things out of doors, he didn't tease me about my hatred of most of that stuff.  More importantly, he was very anxious to meet me.  He let me know that though he generally worked far away, he would be in my neck of the woods soon and wondered if we could get together for lunch.  Fortunately for me, I deliberatedly made myself unavaible for lunch. (Another thing online dating as taught me, never be too eager to share a meal...)  Despite promises to send me a picture first thing, I didn't see one until later in the afternoon the day we would have had lunch.  My immediate impression was no matter how tall this guy is, there is no way I can forgive his looks. 

Please remember I am SHALLOW.  I am working on it, but am not making huge strides.  In the interest of fairness, I put him through the officemate test.  Even with their penchant for hurling me under the bus, they couldn't approve of this guy either.  As is my custom, work got in the way, and I didn't respond to this guy for a couple of days.  I few days later, I get the following email:

"So whats new other than work? Did you like my picture? Do you have any others of yourself?"

How to respond?  How the heck to respond?  This required input from Mrs. Chadwick, who cleverly suggested that I dodge the question.  I responded with the following:

In order:

For the next few days (more than likely weeks), nothing will be new other than work. 

Your picture: It was good to put face to a profile.

More pictures of me: I do, but since that requires me to actually turn on my personal computer, I wouldn't be able to send them until the weekend (hopefully!)

Now to ignore him and hope he leaves me alone!

The Gospel Truth...

Men are rarely as tall as they claim in their profile.  Example, Fabio (Model who contacted me on POF) claimed to be 5'11" on his profile.  Well ladies and gentlemen, flat footed, we started each other right in the eye and I am 5'9".  When did dating profiles become basketball stats?  Why do men feel it necessary to add 2" to their real height?  I have eyes and I wear heels.  Eventually we are going to meet and I'm going to notice that you're lying. 

It has been my experience that men claiming to be 5'11" and shorter are generally fibbing about their height.  So it may be shallow, but I refuse to date a man under 6'0".  Why, you ask.  Well for one thing, that is what I like.  In my lowest of heels, I am 6'0".  In my party heels, I top out around 6'3".  I don't care how wonderful you are, I don't want to be taller than you EVERYTIME we go out.  The second reason is just as simple, though folks call me crazy when they hear it.  I come from a tall family.  The shortest male on my father's side of the family is my father at 6'2".  Yes folks, in the Granger clan, 6'2" makes you the runt of the litter.  I grew up around tall men, I want my children on day to have a shot at not being the shortest Grangers, a title currently held by my sister and I!

Ice, Wine and Painkillers Equals Profile

For at least one site, my online dating profile came about in a very random way.  A year after leaving upstate New York, I was stuck back for a job in the city where I went to law school.  In reconnecting with old friends, I attended a softball game that a couple of my girlfriends were playing in.  I ran into Marie, and by the end of the game, we were off to grab some dinner and hang out at her house.  The idea of online dating had been playing in my head (I needed something to do when I wasn't working), but I didn't take any action until later that night. 

Sitting at her dining room table, with her roommate nursing a black eye with ice and painkillers (from softball, not dating) and some of us nursing (or attacking) a bottle of wine, they persuaded me to allow them to create an my online profile on POF and thus my online dating journey had begun again.

The thing you have to understand about my girlfriends is that they enjoy nothing more than a good lie.  We're talking about women who amuse themselves at bars by telling guys that they are lumberjacks and extolling the virtues of the “lumberjack lifestyle”.  Left up to them I would be a crewmember on crab boat in the Bering Sea or an accomplished entrepreneur who recently capitalized on selling premium lobster semen to haute cuisine restaurants.  Either way, their profile ideas would require a lengthy backstory and let's face it, I didn't want to work that hard.  In the end, we decided to try something novel in online dating- telling the truth.

My original (truthful) profile garnered a fair amount of attention from exactly the type of man I DID NOT want (No matter how much I told them I wasn't interested, geriatric men from Schenectady just wanted to eat me up…)  I reviewed my profile to see if maybe my friends had put a surprise in there to mess with me (like listing my hobbies as nymphomania, interests as balding men, or listing a steadfast belief that panties should never be worn on a first date).  But no, lo and behold, there I was: a 5'9", Black, Single, Lawyer. 

Based on the quality of the responses, I gave up on POF for a while. I had a huge case I was working on, and since the only people who wanted to talk to me were closer in age to my parents than me, I didn't think that I was missing much.  When I finally rejoined a year later, things finally started looking up (at least for a while…)

In the Beginning...

My foray into online dating actually started while I was still in law school.  Back then, I spent a lot of time with my two closest friends at the time, Andrew** and Dwayne**.  I thought nothing of heading out to local bars, clubs, movie theaters and restaurants with them.   I thought nothing of us driving each other's cars if we needed to, having keys to each other's apartments, discussing plans for a dinner and a movie on a Friday night, or having a standing takeout order at my favorite chinese place.  I thought, that is what friends do. 

Well, it turns out it doesn't matter what I thought.  Other folks thought different.  Other folks, including but not limited to, our classmates, our professors, our neighbors, some family members, the bartenders and waitstaff at our favorite bar, and probably most importantly (at least for purposes of this blog) all the men that I encountered during those outings, thought I was off the market.  Turned out that whereas I saw good friends, carpooling/DDing and just spending time together, other folks saw boyfriend and girlfriend out on a date.  Thinking back, I don't think I can blame them.  A guy and girl, with no indication of a familial relationship, almost always arriving/leaving together, discussing plans for dinner and a movie on a regular basis or exchanging keys with updates on what the mechanic had to say about your car, could very well be in a relationship.  Unfortunately at the time, I was blissfully unaware that I was shooting myself in the proverbial dating foot.

Anywho, since I wasn't meeting "Mr. Right" or "Mr. Right Now" in any of the places I frequented, I decided to try online dating.  That didn't last very long.  A combination of a lack of interest on my part to actually pursue anything and a lack of time, being that I was in law school at the time, led to one failed 6 month round at Match.com.   After that, I got rid of my membership, packed up my profile and put dating on the back burner so I could focus on more important things: passing the bar exam and starting my career.  It wasn't until I was admitted and working full-time that I decided to stick my toe back into the dating pool.  A year and a half later, at the suggestion of my officemate and the urgings of my friends, this blog was born.

**Names have been changed to protect the innocent.