I'm baffled... stumped... perplexed... flabbergasted... all of the words that could describe someone, in this case, me, who thought she had seen it all, but was proven wrong. I'm constantly proven wrong when it comes to this online dating world, or dating in general.
There are many reasons this week which I am all of the above named words. Tonight, we'll start with one that happened outside of the online dating world, and in the wonderful world of friends introducing friends. All of this of course is done in hopes that the two mutual friends will find something in common, hit it off, get married have kids, and name one of them after the friend that introduced them. Okay, that may be a little far fetched... maybe. Or it could be exactly what goes through a friend's head when they try to play matchmaker. I wouldn't know, I've never tried. Partially because I don't feel confident enough in my skills to date someone for myself, let alone to hook someone else up. And I'm currently in the, "ALL THE SINGLE GUYS ARE MINE," mindset where I want first dibs on all the single men in the world. That's totally fair, right?
Sorry, back on track. My friend introduced me to his friend. And by introduced, I mean, hey here's his number text him. And then it was in my hands to make the first move, which I HATE doing. I text him, however, eventually... after a few, "Hey, have you text him yet?" messages from my friend. OKAY I GET THE PICTURE I WILL TEXT HIM GOODNESS GRACIOUS.
It started out well. Sort of. We both said that the other one looked familiar, and after 20 questions and playing process of elimination, we decided that at one point or another we had to have seen each other on Tinder or some other online dating site. I found the irony in that one....
So we're talking... we both talk about how busy the other one is. I go to school, work, mom life, etc. He works a few jobs, school, etc. It's starting out great... neither of us has time for the other one. But we continue talking in hopes that by some miracle all of the sudden there will be 36 hours in the day. Hey a total eclipse of the sun is happening in a week's time, anything is possible, right? It's like Y2K all over again here in Oregon where we are expected to have way too many people than the state can handle. I don't think it's too much to ask that if something big were to happen, we get more hours in a day.
Anyway... we're both busy so the talking happens sporadically. He says that I'm pretty, which of course every girl loves to hear. I'm not all that attracted to him, but what I gather from his personality, he seems like a pretty fun guy. Plus he's a firefighter... hello! Every girl's fantasy. And if you're a girl and you say it's not your fantasy, you're lying.
The other day I woke up for work and I rolled over to turn off the alarm on my phone, secretly wanting to hit snooze or just turn the thing off and go back to sleep. I see that I have a few messages, though, and I decide that I should check them. Still half asleep, I pull up the messages and find that a couple of them are from this friend's friend, whose name I'll leave private in this case. I'm feeling nice and generous tonight, so he's lucky.
I went from asleep to wide awake in .2 seconds. There, on my phone, waiting for me at wayyyyy too early in the morning (have I mentioned I'm not a morning person) was a picture. You know what kind of picture it is without me having to tell you. And for the record, in case any guy is out there reading this, GIRLS DON'T WANT THOSE KIND OF PICTURES. UNLESS WE ASK FOR THEM. AND WE WON'T ASK FOR THEM. GOT IT? Ugh.
That's not the kind of image you want to wake up to way early in the morning. Especially unsolicited. There was some overly confident caption that went along with it. I'd use another word for overly confident but I'm still taken back by the picture, even days later, that I just would rather not. Something about, I was thinking about you and this is what happened. Ummmmmmm.... thanks? But no thanks. I don't take that as a compliment. I'm still trying to remove the picture from my head at this point.
So, I don't respond. I have no idea what to respond with, at this point, and whatever I would be likely to say wouldn't be nice because I was so angry. Angry that I had to wake up to that. Angry that this person thinks that I'm the type of girl that just loves getting those type of pictures. Angry that its an image I can't erase from my mind. Angry for all the reasons.
A few hours later, I get another text from him. Apparently at this point, he has woken up from a drunken state and realize what he had done. He's apologetic, and blah blah. Claims he never takes or sends those kind of pictures and doesn't know what he was thinking.... all of the clever excuses to try and get me to forgive him. I respond so that he knows that I at least got his apology texts, and say, "It's definitely not what I expected to wake up to." That was the nicest thing I could think to say, because, after all, this guy is friends with a friend of mine. I didn't want to be a complete jerk and say something too mean. We haven't talked since. However, thanks to his "drunken shenanigans," I now am terrified of opening my phone any time it says "Picture Message." Thanks for that.
