Tabatha Deans

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME
I awoke this morning to the cool breeze blowing through my window from the alley way, across my face. The morning of my 44th birthday, I lounged in bed for an hour, stretching and pondering. I felt no angst, only peace, and realized that this was the best birthday ever already.
For the past several years, around my birthday, my father has been recovering from health issues, and my sister has been addicted to drugs. This year my father is in stellar health, (although he was sick over having spend a lot of money on truck repairs) and my sister is thriving in a detox center, headed for a live-in treatment center. Everyone I love is doing well, my writing gigs are starting to come together, and I couldn’t think of one solitary thing to fret about.
I got up and made myself a cup of coffee, and settled down to enjoy my birthday present from Jessica. She gifted me with a three month subscription to match.com, and I intended to spend the day filling out my profile and searching the internet for potential new friends.
I sat staring at the blank profile page. How do I sum up my being in 3000 words?What do I want to share with the world and strangers?
I managed to do a satisfactory job on my profile, then Jess added some pictures and a few hobbies, and I started cruising for men. I promised Jess I would go out on at least 12 dates. She reminded me that she’s been dating longer than I have, so I took her advice and started “winking” at people who seemed interesting. Now let me be clear, and this will later be my defense—the site doesn’t make it easy to navigate between tasks, especially if you have a slow computer like mine. I quickly tired of the half dozen keystrokes it required just to get a glimpse of a profile, so I just started reading the opening lines that are available on the same page, and winking based on the first line.
A “wink” is a little message that you can send just saying I saw your profile and…It’s a non-embarrassing, safe way to check someone out. They respond with a wink or an email, and the game is on. I let my winks sit overnight, while I visited my good friend from Utah for a girls night of beers, wandering downtown and catching up. When I returned home the next day, I was excited to see all my emails and wink responses.
I called Jess ready to brag about my efforts, and she jumped online to check them out with me. There was silence for a moment, then a shriek of surprise.
“Oh, Mama! What?! Who have you?! Forget it, you’ve lost your winking privileges!” She was pretty serious about that. “How did you pick these guys?”
“I just winked at the daily matches they sent me. It took too long to get through all the pages,” I figured some of them would be losers, but she should at least be proud of me for trying.
“Uh, mom, this guy is a nazi,” she referred to a profile.
“Just because he’s bald…”” I tried to defend myself.
“No. He says right here in his profile—I idolize Hitler, I love Hitler, Hitler was misunderstood…”
“Oh.”
Back to the drawing board…

April 26, 2012 - Posted by Tabatha Stewart | Uncategorized