Modern dating: A parallel

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I was thinking the other day about the phenomenon of online dating. Since I haven't dated since my early 20's (which was - officially - about two million years ago), I haven't been privy to the evolutionary nuances of online dating. Apparently, since my early 20's, the population of online singles has 'Darwined' from the genus "weird, anti-social geeky dudes" to "everyone on the planet". And that's fine, I have no issues with that, except that it's taken me a little while to let that sift through to the recesses of my 30-something cortex. But I'm all good now.

What I do like about online dating is that the usual email correspondence to kick off the flirting is akin to the letter-writing of the days of yore. When a boy liked a girl, he would write her love letters, and hope for a return post. Similar in spirit to the email, I suppose. After all, in both scenarios, you choose your words and write your letter and send them off, hoping that you don't write anything so strange, weird, off-putting or otherwise lame that the other party will be suddenly uninterested. On the flip side, to return the sentiment with a response, you need to be thoughtful, funny, responsive, and interested... but not overreaching or overly eager. Overall, an interesting parallel to the old-time wooing of old. Sure, it's a new technology paired with new terminology and a penchant for informality and strange acronyms (LOL, TTYL, etc)... but the spirit of the gesture is the same. And I love it.

Why? Most of you know that I hate the phone. I use it as a tool - a function primarily of setting up further means of communication, preferably in person. Sure, if there's a distance between two people who like to communicate, then the phone is a necessary intermediary. But on a day-to-day basis, I generally hate calling people. (In fact, I disconnected my land line the other day, and now the only way to reach me is to call my cell. Besides the need to be suddenly more descriptive if I ever have to call 911, I have only experienced one down-side: If you misplace your cell phone in your apartment, there's nothing to call it with in order to echo-locate the sucker. A minor, yet surprisingly annoying side effect.)

Since I'm not a phone lover, and long-hand is far too difficult and not immediately gratifying, I'm officially addicted to emails. If it's not obvious from the 27 blog postings I put up in the 30-day month of April (gads, I hope I'm not boring to read), I have recently found a love of writing. And these postings are nothing compared to the number of ramblings that are too personal, strange, embarrassing, or obscene to post. And since I'm a bit of a romantic at heart (no, that part of me wasn't completely killed), the idea of the email being a means to express oneself a la the hand-written posts of old is rather... well... sweet.

So here's to emailing... and the romantic spirit of Times New Roman 10-point.

p.s. to the boys who call and I don't call back: don't take it personally... it's the means I'm adverse to, not necessarily the message.

p.p.s. It's amazing what I'll resort to when I'm desperate. Lack of mouthwash made me turn to a hydrogen peroxide mouth rinse this evening. Surprisingly tasteless, the only bizarre side effect was the bubbling that didn't stop for 30 seconds after I stopped rinsing. Bletch. And I have lost about 50% of the sensation on my tongue. Hope that goes away soon.
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