Well, guys who are old enough to be your dad, anyway.
As it turns out, I’m the world’s most recent member of MarriageMindedPeopleMeet.com.
The site is exactly what it sounds like and no, I’m not a willing participant. My doppelganger signed me up. You know, the one from California? I wrote about her some time ago. Her name is also Jackie and her email address is separated from mine thanks to only one tiny, almost-indistinguishable period between her first and middle name. And every time her classmates, favorite stores, and organizations overlook that tiny, important dot, I get sucked into her world.
She’s basically everything I might be in another plane of existence. She’s from California, where my parents used to live. She likes to hike and bike and accomplish various outdoor feats, the majority of which have confirmation numbers associated with them and are sent to me. I can’t tell if she teaches or is just in grad school; I just know that one time I was sent an email asking for that day’s class materials to be resent. She’s a class-attending, surfing, active California girl – the opposite of my pale, Central Pennsylvanian roots. We’re two diverging shoots from the same name seed…I’m also in a steady relationship and she clearly is not.
It started with the account confirmation email. I threw it in my Spam folder thinking it was just another runaway email intended for her but the correspondences kept coming. My profile had been successfully set up, my matches were ready for review, and then suddenly: I had a New Flirt Message.
This is how I feel when I see I have a New Flirt Message
Since I already know so much about my doppelganger, I figured I might as well take the opportunity before I unsubscribe to see the sort of preferences she had locked in for herself. I opened the email to find the faces of men in their 50’s with salt and pepper hair staring back at me, looking for love. Her/my username? “Beachgirl” with some numbers behind it.
Figures.
The entire experience has been rather traumatizing. Not just because the unsubscribe link sent me to the fifth circle of hell where I had to log in before I was allowed to unsubscribe, but also because 50’s men with salt and pepper hair is a category my own (married) father falls into. And every day I’ve been receiving Flirt Messages from a group of fellows who could pass for his inner circle. Their little internet portraits are lined up in a row and they’re all staring at me with lonely, wanton eyes.
Of course like most oddities that cross my path, I considered leveraging it for the blog. There were a variety of inappropriate uses that I mulled over, including a sidebar widget with my most recent matches. Or the option of allowing my readers to fill out my profile and choose my picture.
But I have limits, people, and fake-flirting with men twice my age in order to entertain my reader base is apparently one of them.
Of course, poor Jackie California is over on the West Coast trying desperately to connect with this group of square-faced beady-eyed men and wondering why no one is flirting back with her. And while I’m kind of quietly satisfied at this because she has failed to change her email address or to indicate to her contacts that the dot in its middle is crucial to delivery success in spite of my notifying her of my email interceptions, I’m also hoping she’s not taking it to heart that no one is getting back to her. After all, she works out. And tans. And lives the good life we see on t-shirts in verse form. I’m sure she’s lovely-looking for a middle-aged stubborn woman.
So if you’re out there and listening, Jackie California, know that this has nothing to do with you and everything to do with me not being into my dad. One day, I hope you’ll understand.
Until then, let’s finally change that email address of yours, hmm? I’m not really the Stranger Danger type and These Flirt Messages are starting to give me panic attacks. ♣
P.S. The Lohan hosted SNL on Saturday. She got the 2nd highest ratings of the current season but also got some of the worst feedback of the season. Apparently, a lot of people tuned in to see her fail. Lesson learned: when seeking fame, one should just as well abandoning attempts to be awesome and begin attempts to famously suck.
The Jackie Blog 