squid pro quo

now that you know a little about my spouse, i would like to tell you a tiny story. first, i'll say that i have some dear friends. they are quite stellar. about as stellar as two people could be. they are so neat that if either of them were one ounce neater, or more interesting, you wouldn't be able to know them anymore because you would die of inadequacy in your regular life. for instance: at 8am (i'm making up these times. i don't think they are even up that early. and i know that i am not up that early). ok, i'll begin again: at 8am, they are tidying up their yurt. at 8am, i am cooking oat bran in the microwave and waiting for my dog to finish eating so i can give her a shot of insulin. at 12noon, they are admiring a deer that has come to rest in their own personal dell. at 12noon, i am hurriedly wresting the wrapper from my chocolate power bar so i can eat it and run out to the chevron station before the rush. at 3pm they are translating tibetan scrolls and composing poems (in addition to the one with the words 'mink water' in it) while contemplating baby names. at 3pm i am collecting all the bags of poop that i have thrown over my back wall after walking my dog so i can place them in the proper receptacle. ok, you get the idea. this is really just an exercise in self-effacing humor. i'm actually pretty neat, once you get to know me, but the point is that these people are lovely and wonderful. and they met online. ok, ok, i know, you've all seen the commercials for e-harmony. well, what i'm saying is that they didn't meet on e-harmony, but they did meet online before it was cool and i wanted to be just like them, so i started looking in the privacy of my own office. i mean, home.

well, if you've ever created a profile for online dating, you will know that it is excruciating and worse than writing an oral report on 'young goodman brown,' or wearing pantyhose and telling someone directly why you think you'd be good for a job. it's pretty bad. forget about what i said before, it's worse than bending your fingernail backwards or finding a dead bird outside of your front door. and next you have to put up a stupid picture of yourself and then die a thousand deaths as you hit UPLOAD. it's pretty mortifying. and it's mortifying because you don't know that in approximately 2 years and 3 months from that moment you will be marrying the most incredible creature you could not have made up in a hundred thousand lifetimes. so, you pick a picture, because you have heard that everyone ignores a photoless profile, and then you sit back and wait for the responses to roll in. well, that's provided you don't upload a picture of a gigantic dead squid on a stainless steel examining table, which is what i did. i was kind of embarrassed to put a photo of myself, and it seemed ghastly to put up a baby or childhood picture, which, incredibly, some people do without the tiniest shudder in even the most remote piece of their brain. so i pulled a picture of a recently discovered giant squid, and put it up with the following disclaimer: "i really do not look like a gigantic squid, but i'll be happy to email you a photo." do i have to tell you that my technique did not reap me very many replies? i kept checking my email and nobody had written. and my profile was interesting too. i had really taken a lot of care in filling it out.

i finally decided that it didn't matter. why not put up a photo? everyone is up there--everyone allows himself or herself a little vulnerability. it's important to be honest in the pursuit, or else, what good could come from it? so, i found a nice looking photo--it was sort of natural, nice lighting, a slight smile, kind of a 3/4 view--really good, and i posted it. but it was a photo of someone i had never met. it was just a nice photo of someone in kind of a chunky wooly sweater and those neat rubber gardening clogs. i came across the photo while reading an article about people in a community volunteering to plant trees or something, and i put the picture up there in my profile. i got a bunch of replies, but i wasn't terribly interested in any of the people, and then i started to feel bad because i don't own a pair of those gardening clogs. i wrote each person who had written to me a nice note, and they all wrote back saying they thought it was nice that i wrote back and good luck. everyone was really nice. i wondered about the person in my photo--all those people who were planting trees seemed interesting--like they were all friends and they had gone out to plant trees together, all of them with the kind of hair that dries nicely on its own, even in a lot of humidity. then i took the photo down, after someone said that they thought what i did was the worst thing they had ever heard in their life. i later replaced it with a photo of myself that was about one centimeter by one centimeter in size. it was just big enough to tell what color hair i had, and that i was sort of near a pool or something. and with that, i met the person of my dreams. well, that and my award-winning profile i wrote which i mentioned before. i also got a letter from someone who kept a dead crow in the bedroom and a lot of people without photos on their profiles. i wrote back to everyone and said thank you, but i had met someone else. and that is the story of online dating. good-night.