The Legend of Moby Dick

The things I don’t know would fill volumes. It never fails to astound me what everyone else seems to know and take for granted, that I’m clueless about.

For example:

Reno is farther west than Los Angeles.

A duck’s quack doesn’t echo.

Calculus?  Ugh.

Everything we think we know about ghosts comes from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.  Old Jacob Marley was the first depiction of a ghost that was translucent. I learned that this week….

The name Wendy was made up for the story Peter Pan.  The name Wendy did not exist prior to that. Seriously.  No Wendy before that. Ever.

If you keep your ice cream in a sealed baggie when you stuff the tub in the freezer, your ice cream will stay soft and not harden to the point where you’ll have to snap a spoon to get a scoop. (Someone try this and report back.)

That stupid W-? form where you need to determine your exemptions for your withholding.  Why can’t any of us get that one right? (Let me know if you need my friend Rita’s number…)

 

If you take the vast amount of things I don’t know and couple it with the fact that I have a optimism-to-the-point-of-delusional outlook on life, AND nearly no (none) experience dating, you can imagine the madness of my experiences with the likes of Match.com, et al recently.

I learned that:

• Ghosting is a thing. And it has nothing to do with Patrick Swayze.
• “Soon!”  As in the text message “See you soon!” can mean anything from an hour from now, to never, according to my dude translator friend Tom.
• If, as the female, you want to signal to the guy that you don’t want to see him again, offer to pay your half of the bill.
• Every man’s profile includes a reference to how much they enjoy long walks and wine.
• Sex on the first date does not mean instant connection. It means instant regret.
• And fish pics….. Apparently, they mean more than a love of the great outdoors.

Nearly every profile of a guy on a dating site includes a picture of him with a fish.  Something he presumably caught with his buddies, by the way, not something he ordered for dinner.

I remember looking at all those fish pics during my online dating phase and was struck by how many outdoorsy guys there are.  Who knew?

What I didn’t know was that a fish pic is…. Symbolic.

I was enlightened one evening over dinner with one of the few guys whose profile was fish free. A sweet Match.com guy we’ll call the Baldwin Brother.  We had a great time and connected quickly over our online dating experiences.

(excerpted from A Wink & A Prayer)

In the meantime, the Baldwin brother and I meet for dinner at a great spot in the city. We talked and laughed for hours. He was funny and kind and cute, with a lovely smile. Nice dresser. Great shoes… I found myself really enjoying the evening.

But… his wife passed away less than a year ago. He’s working through it and thinks he’s ready to move forward. I can tell after just a few minutes that he still has a lot of healing to do.  It’s too soon. He’s a funny, lovely man, but his heart is broken.

As the evening unfolds, we talk about our shared experiences with online dating. He’s surprised that I’m new to it. I share a story or two that made him laugh out loud. It’s all new to me, so I’m not sure what to hope for or expect. But what I do know to this point is that it’s pure madness.

He, on the other hand, has a very high bar for this process. He met his wife over a decade ago on an online dating site. So he’s approaching this round of dating with confidence and hope, grounded in his prior experience. He found the love of his life ten years ago. The bar is high. He’s hopeful.

Online dating has apparently changed in bit in the last ten years. He finds it funny that women comment about the absence of a fish pic in his profile. “I can’t bring myself to do it. I haven’t seen any other guy’s profiles, so I can only imagine. Do men really have pics of themselves holding a big fish??” I look puzzled as to why he feels so strongly about outdoorsy fish pics and he looks at me as if I just landed on the planet.

He leans across the table, lowers his voice and clues me in. “The fish is supposed to convey their penis size!” He thinks it’s hysterical.

I laugh out loud. That explains a lot.

And then I remember…. Alpha has a record-breaking fish. Seriously. It’s the biggest fish ever caught off the coast of Mexico. And it’s his.

It’s a great pic.

I don’t tell the Baldwin brother that story. Given what I’ve just learned, talking about the size of another man’s fish is a bad idea on a first date.

And that made wonder about the boxes we all check on those dating site profiles: Marital status?  Do you want kids?  Smoker? Do you drink? Profession? Education? Income?  Etc.

Each topic offers a drop down box and some options.  This all goes into the great algorithm that is the secret sauce behind the dating site. Now I think maybe there should be a fish question and a list of relevant drop down options from which to select. Guppie Guy, Minnow Man, Bottom Feeder, Bad Ass Bass, Moby Dick, etc.

They are just as likely to lie about the size of their fish as they do their education, income or age.  So nothing’s really lost.

But we all know a fish story when we hear one. A fish story is, by definition, a lie, an exaggeration, an improbable boastful tale.  And it makes me wonder about all those pics and all those fish.

Let’s be honest. There’s no way to know if that’s really their fish.  He could have picked that fish up at the store on his way to the dock, lol. He probably took a number at the counter,  waited his turn,  stood in front of the cases at the market looking for the biggest fish/prop, while other people were patiently waiting to select something for the evening’s dinner. His fish has likely been in a cooler on ice, in his car for hours. And the damn boat probably never left the dock.

No worms were harmed in the making of his pic.

In fact, knowing what I know now, I’d be confident in assuming that in 95% of the pictures on a dating profile, the pic is at least 10 years old and the fish is a prop.  That tells you everything you need to know right there about my online dating experiences….

And while there’s still A LOT of things I should probably know by now, there is one thing I DO know….  There is no point in losing sleep over the one that got away.