During COVID, I met a lady at an online dating site and we seemed to hit it off with text messages so we exchanged telephone numbers. Her bio said she was a stockbroker, living in the Florida area where I resided at the time. So we arranged to have a phone conversation one Friday night.
The first thing she tells me is that she is currently in Los Angeles visiting her son. She sent some spectacular photos of the beach from her son’s penthouse apartment. Then she mentions her current job is walking dogs, as the stock brokerage business declined somewhat after she had lost her license. Her real vocation, however, is within the medical field, healing holistically through the use of special crystals.
“In fact,” she said, “You would be amazed at some of the famous people I’ve treated with my practice.”
Now, I’m thinking there can’t be that many of them if she is scraping by on dog-walking, but I’m always curious so I asked if I would have heard of any of them.
“An associate and I successfully treated a former President of the United States for a very personal issue.”
“Really? Not Jimmy Carter!” I said.
“No it was Bill Clinton. We helped straighten his curved penis into a better position through the healing power of our crystals.”
“Really? Did it involve more than a laying-on of your hands?” I asked with a slight giggle. I’m laughing at my own joke, which I thought was pretty good, but she fails to see any humor. We sputtered on for a few more minutes and finally said good night. Thank goodness she lost my number.
*****
I met an attractive woman online, widow, who really was a rocket scientist. Having spent time in the commercial space business myself, she knew many of the same people I did. So as we’re comparing notes, we’ve lived in the same neighborhood for over a year and had never met. Now, I walk my dogs every day past her home and had never seen her during the entire year she had been there. Why? Because due to COVID, she had not left her house the entire time! She works remotely as a consultant to most of the commercial space firms and never left her house. At night, she couldn’t sleep much, so also volunteers as a resource for a suicide prevention hotline.
OK, no problem there from my perspective. A little odd, but when you get to a certain IQ level things do get odd from a normal perspective. I, on the other hand, left my house every day to walk dogs, do swimming workouts at the gym, and the usual grocery shop excursions. I’m not one to judge other people’s phobias for the most part; and the phobias or sleep patterns of attractive women even more so. It’s part of what makes them interesting.
We become friends on Facebook, start talking every evening, and seemed destined to at least go on a date or two after the pandemic dust cleared, until one fateful evening. I had even agreed to take care of her dogs in the event she passed away (as she had no living family).
“Dan, I’m privy to some classified data on COVID and things are about to get worse! You need to stop leaving your home so you’ll survive it!”
Swimming is my sanity and I am loath to forgo doing it as often as I can. Walking is my dog’s sanity, and she isn’t going to be amused if I stopped. Going to the grocery store was the only way to get the products I need at a reasonable price. As a retired person on a fixed income (I love saying that), it’s important to be mindful of wasteful spending. So I regretfully refused to hole up within my home.
She dumped me like a hot rock, which is probably for the best. As far as I know, she might still be sitting at home, worried about her exposure to contagion. I’d still take care of her dogs, though, if the situation arose as it’s not their fault Momma isn’t all there.
*****
I had a short online dating acquaintance with a psychologist, we seemed to match up well conversationally until I made a major faux pas by being truthful. Her profile said she was spiritual, but I’m a coexist type when it comes to those types of belief systems. The particular platform where we met didn’t provide any options to explain my views other than “agnostic”. She asked for my views and I replied I didn’t have enough faith to be an atheist, but was probably closest to that view. I think I also mentioned something about not needing to engage in magical thinking when I don’t understand something about the universe.
She comes back with the verdict we weren’t a match due to the issue. No big deal, it happens and is likely mutual. What was interesting is what she said next to support her views.
She cites the 1st Law of Thermodynamics to support her contentions about energy-based spiritual evolution. Aren’t liberal arts majors cute when they use hard science to support their faith-based spiritual views? Besides completely ignoring the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, which guts her thesis, it’s similar to a Bible-belt Christian using geologic data to support the Biblical account of the Flood.
Whew, many bullets dodged with this one!
Image by Erika Wittlieb