Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Match and My Mother

My mother is 64 and has been divorced since 1993. In the years between then and now, she has not dated. Not at all. In 1997 she signed up for Match.com or something like that and had a few phone calls, maybe one coffee meet up, but they all went no where. She had a single friend her age who would drag her to singles parties and my mother would come home and say things like, "Ugh, I'm never going to one of those again. The men are old and some even had comb-overs!" So she remained dateless and seemed happy about it. She has her dog to keep her company.
Recently, my mother's financial situation has changed and she has been forced to tighten the purse strings. She does not like this. It has pushed her to start trying to date again, in hopes that she may find a wealthy friend. It is not really the right reason to be doing this, but I am used to my mother and can't really see any harm in it. In fact, I predicted that this is what she would decide to do - find someone to take care of her.
My mother has been emailing me with questions about her Match profile. First she wanted to know what username she should use. I suggested she use her initials and some numbers, instead of trying to be cutesy with a name like, "lookingforman$." Not really that name, but something less honest. So she sent me a list of potential names and I almost died laughing when I read them. The problem is that my mother's initials are SM. You don't really want those in your Match username.
She came up with a suitable alternative. Then she emailed me a list of people who had apparently looked at her profile, with the message, "This is frighting!" Another charming thing about my mother is that she can't spell. That does not bode well for online chatting. I asked her what her profile said and she sent me her username and password so I could check it out.
I don't think my mother saved whatever she had written because her profile was blank. All it said was "Woman looking for a man 25-45." My mother is 64.
I am hoping that this is a mistake.

No comments: