A hilarious look at dating in the 21st century as an older adult. Mr. Scaffidi shares some of his humorous adventures in dating, and also some of the do's and don'ts of on line line dating.
Memoirs of a Senior Dater
A humorous look at dating past 40By RJ SCAFFIDIAuthorHouse
Copyright © 2010 RJ Scaffidi
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4520-5135-2Contents
Preface................................................xiChapter 1 Getting Started..............................1Chapter 2 OMG, LOL.....................................7Chapter 3 Profiles.....................................17Chapter 4 The First Date...............................27Chapter 5 The Aftermath................................33Chapter 6 The Wasband..................................41Chapter 7 Here We Go Again.............................51Chapter 8 The Professional.............................59Chapter 9 The Truth....................................67Chapter 10 Sweet Home Alabama..........................75Chapter 11 Does the Hand Fit?..........................83Chapter 12 I Need to Pass the Test.....................91Epilogue...............................................99About the Author.......................................101
Chapter One
Getting Started
In the old days of adult dating you would go to a bar, mingle, use your favorite line and then hope to find that special someone. You only knew a little about the person, only what you could find out that evening, and mostly while under the influence of alcohol.
Guys would use catchy lines like, "What's your sign?" "Do you come here often?" My all time favorite is, "Do you know what time it is?" She answers and you say, "Well, now that we have the time, how about the place?" So classic!
With having to go through that kind of torture, you can see why online dating has become so popular. You can scan through the lists of pictures and profiles and never have to say a single word. Just go through and throw out the ugly ones first, then the dumb ones, and take the couple that are left and check them out.
Of course you have to put your picture on there and write a short profile about yourself. There is a whole chapter on profiles later in the book. You write down your likes and dislikes, all the things you want in a person, and just lie your butt off to make yourself sound good.
A couple dating sites like eHarmony and Chemistry.com, ask you a series of questions and they pick the possibilities for you. You can only choose from the ones they send you.
The other types of dating services, like Match.com, DateHookup.com and Singlesnet.com, just to name a few, have you look through countless pictures and profiles.
Of course, everyone starts out looking at all the good-looking ones. As you read through this book, you will find that the top criterion isn't who looks the best. Unfortunately, the top criterion is something that you can't see. It's called sanity.
There should be a genetic sanity test of some sort that each dater has to take and, if they prove to be neurotic, psychotic, schizophrenic or pathological, it should be listed in their profile. Now, for guys, this test is simple, just check to see which women I've already dated and you can eliminate them. It's like I have a tattoo on my forehead, "Crazy women, please call me for a date."
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Some of the pictures you see posted are worth much more than that. I wish I could put pictures in the book, but I would spend the rest of my life in court.
I had one lady show just her face in her picture, and in person she was huge. Now that is just dishonest! Then you have to look at her for the first time and act happy to meet her.
You have to wonder what some people are thinking when they post some of the pictures that you come across. I saw this one lady sitting on her couch in a housecoat, smoking a cigarette and had the meanest look on her face. Who was she trying to snag with that picture?
Beware, to of pictures where the person is at a distance or hiding behind something. The reason is that they are doing just that, hiding something.
I met with a lady and she looked good in her picture, which was taken from a distance, but when I met her up close, wow! It was like one of those people you meet in a bar and it takes about 3 beers before you can even look them in the face.
I searched on the men's side and saw as many horrifying pictures there too. Some guy with a potbelly was holding up a big fish he caught. I'm not sure I would want to meet the woman that he attracted with that picture. Hint to the guys, women could care less about the size of your bass.
You almost have to wonder, after looking at some of these pictures, whether some of these people were put up to it as a gag or a joke. The ones who weren't posting as a gag, you would have to ask them, "Don't you have a mirror in your house?"
I mostly look at the ladie's pages, so I am speaking mostly to that. There was a picture of a lady that had on what looked like orange gym shorts, an orange tank top and a garter on her arm. At first I thought it was a man in drag. The sad thing about this is that this woman would probably pass my genetic sanity test. It's just not fair!
I had a female friend of mine tell me she saw this guy on line with dark black hair. She had agreed to meet with him and went to a restaurant to meet him there. She said she went in and scoured the place trying to find him and couldn't. She also noticed this one man in the restaurant staring at her. Finally this man came up to her and asked if she was Terri and she said yes. He said, "Hi, I'm Rob." She said this man was as bald as a cue ball and she would have never recognized him in a million years. The picture he posted was at least 10 years old.
Then you have the opposite type. The really attractive women who want to show off their stuff. You know the ones, dresses up to their mid thigh, boobs hanging out and all kinds of suggestive poses. Then they complain that the guy wanted to have sex on the first date.
Finally you have the normal ones. Nice looking women, dressed nice in modest attire, nice profiles written. Now these were the ones I went after and you'll see where it got me. Remember what our mothers told us, "All that glistens is not gold."
If I could add something to that, "Just because it glistens, doesn't mean they aren't crazy." It's not nearly as eloquent as the former saying, but still the truth.
Chapter Two
OMG, LOL
WELCOME TO THE 21ST CENTURY and on-line dating. This is where you spend half your life getting to know someone before you actually talk to him or her on the phone. You have to email and instant message back and forth before you ever get to that first phone call. It's guys like Jeffery Dahmer, who used to eat his dates, which have ruined it for all of us. Nobody trusts anyone, and you are going to prove yourself to him or her, no matter what.
Instant messaging (IM) is where a little screen pops up on your computer and you can instantly send messages back and forth, whereas email has to be sent and received by the other party to read and respond. Not all sites have IM.
On-line email isn't sent to your normal email address either, but rather to one they give you. If that person doesn't log in to the online service, that email can set there for a week. Then they answer your email and it sets in your mailbox. You then respond, and then after a month you know each other's names.
I had a lady who would send me an email and say "Good Morning". That's it! I would send one back and say "Good Morning", and tell her things about myself in hopes of getting more out of her. No, she was going to turn this into a life long adventure. Her response, "You sound nice".
Then it becomes a challenge, so you stick to it, determined to find out who this mystery woman is. You start off talking about your grandchildren, and then by the first meeting, you have great grandchildren.
That is why instant messaging is so much better. There is banter back and forth and it moves much quicker. The problem is that you have to learn another language. Things like BRB, LOL, OMG and my favorite, ROTFL, become the new words of the day. Translations: BRB=be right back, LOL=laugh out loud, OMG=oh my God and ROTFL=rolling on the floor laughing. The last one can be a good sign that you are getting along, unless you are telling her about your last sexual encounter.
Of course, whether you IM or email, you need to be careful how you word things. The written word can be taken many ways, as we all know. There is no inflection in the voice to be heard and no expression on the face to see. Then, of course, that trust thing we mentioned.
One lady sent me one photo via email and when I asked for more, you would have thought I had asked for a naked picture of her grand daughter. As they say on IM, "OMG!"
I just wanted another view. She was a very pretty lady. She had dark auburn hair and deep brown eyes. She also had the most perfect teeth you could imagine. I just wanted to see more is all. The picture was a close up and, as you'll later find out, that usually means she's hiding something.
Of course, being the well-trained ex-husband that I am, and having taken many an oral beating from my ex, I sent a retraction email along with an apology.
She sent me back an email and said she accepted my apology, but she was going to start seeing some other person and wished me well. I didn't know if I should be hurt or do cartwheels because I escaped a life of verbal abuse.
Well, a few weeks passed and she wrote back. She said that maybe she had been too hasty and wanted to get to know me. So we emailed back and forth and I told her I was divorced twice. She wrote back and told me I seemed nice, but she thought divorce is wrong and that marriage is forever. I could respect that, but this was coming from a divorced woman. This time I really did do cartwheels!!
Then I had a lady who pursued me with emails first and then gave me her phone number right away, a definite 21st century no-no. We had gotten to know each other very well through the emails, but some things you would rather tell them on the phone or in person. I told her I was divorced twice, and I could hear the deafening silence on the other end. I knew I was in trouble. She said to me, "You sound like a really nice man, but I don't want to be your number 3". Hello, did someone hear me ask her to marry me?
Emails like those last 2 will hurt your feelings at first, but once you have been in the dating circuit for a while, you'll understand how God has spared you from a life of grief and mental abuse.
Another feature of the dating service sites is the wink or flirt feature. You can send a wink to a prospective date and if they are interested, they will email back. A lot of times these winks go unanswered, so you don't know if they got it or not, or if they accidentally erased it. I have always made it a policy of mine to answer a wink, no matter if I was interested or not.
One day I got a wink from a lady, and I really wasn't interested in her at all, but I thought I would be nice and email her back. I told her it wasn't that I wasn't interested in her, but I already had several ladies that I was conversing with and it was getting confusing. I have received these emails from others and I have sent them to others and received thanks back.
Here is what she sent, it appears as it was sent:
i will make it less confusing. do not respond to this message......sounds like you like yourself a bit too much!! get real ...
WOW! I guess I'll take that one off my list.
One of the dating services that I use has an IM built into it. The only people who seem to use it, in my experiences, are young good-looking women who want to talk to me. I was on line only a couple days when I got my first one. I immediately called all my male friends to tell them how studly I am. "Dudes, 20 and 30 year olds are after me". All my guy friends were in awe. Some of them were living vicariously through me.
When I asked this beautiful girl about our age difference, she told me that love is blind to age. "When 2 people love each other it doesn't matter." Right on sister, I'm right there with you. Then she sent me some pictures and I was trying to figure out how to tell my 2 thirty-year old children that their future new mother was younger than them.
All of a sudden it happened! You could hear the air coming out of my balloon from blocks away. She started to tell me how she lives in western Africa and her father is in prison and he is a state official, yada yada yada.... It was just like those emails you get where they have money that they will give you if you help them out by giving them all the personal information about yourself so they can clean out your bank accounts. So, see, this dating is not all fun and games, but a learning experience too! By the way, I never told my guy friends this, just that I wasn't interested in her.
My friend sent me this next one, which was an email response to her. Now guys, if you take this and clean up the spelling a little, you can have the women just eating out of your hands. This was cut and pasted as it appeared.
You need to know how fascinating it was reading from you. Top of the day to you cute princess, I have to confess to you that you already made my day, I am not always constant on here so I have to apologise for getting back to you late. What a stand out attitude you have got according to your profile, you are the rearest lady
I have met on here since I have joined the site and this is what I have craved for all my life.
Finding a good lady is the dream of every man but devoting the time might be another obstacle in any relationship, I have been married for years before the very common thing happened which is divorce, not that we did not like or loved each other but the problem is inbalance of the love we have for each other so we had to give it up at the later stage of the marriage. Now I have to move on and find someone that is very caring, courageous, passionate, adventurous and among all willing to give almost anything a go.
I have been single for over 7 years and living with my children since then, they are grown ups now and living on there on. I am starting to feel the kind of loneliness any man would have felt because I have been living alone in this big house for over 3 years now, even If I am not always home because of the nature of my job(structural engineer), would at least still need a partner I can call upon at anytime, talk to, live with and share the same thought, knowledge and feeling. Someone I would love and appreciate at any giving time, someone I can stand up for and can stand up for me when needed.
I was always told that beauty is in the eyes of the Beholder. Today, I can truly say if I was asked to define beauty I'd say it's you. I'm not referring to your physical beauty NO. The minute I saw your profile and went through it, It is as if God opened my soul, my spirit, my heart, my very essence of being, Just so I can truly comp rehend the glory of your Inner beauty. I pray that my words are touching the depth of your heart because It's the only way you will truly know and believe that we may be Soul mates. If you really believe in LOVE at First Sight, If you want to have a future with A man who naturally knows your heart, then take my heart and lets embark on a journey of bliss pleasure, companionship, friendship, growth, love, and beautiful Moments. Kindly send me a note here at (his email address was here).
Now be honest, didn't you get all gooey inside? I know I did, unless it was that burrito I ate a while ago. He saw 1 facial picture on a dating service site and it was love at first sight, soul mates! Hard to believe this guy has been single for 7 years.
The same friend sent me this next one. As a reminder, these were cut and pasted, just as they were written. Only the names were changed to protect the ignorant.
AS I LOOKED AT YOU MY HORN WENT AAOOOGGGAAA
AND IN OUR LANGUAGE THAT MEANS BEEP BEEP-OR KNOCK KNOCK-AM FRANK FROM PITTSBURGH /WIDOWER/ GOOD LOOKING/DANCER/TRAVELER/ GOOD COOK/AND SINGER-IF U LIKE TELL ME SO-SO I WILL KNOW/ THAT JUST LIKE ME -YOU SHAKE MY TREE-AND MAYBE MAYBE-TAKE A CHANCE AND FIND ROMANCE/ WHEN WE DANCE-FRANK
In our language that means beep-beep? Who is this guy, the Road Runner? After receiving those last 2 emails, it's a wonder my friend even looks at men. Fortunately, she has developed an online sense of humor. That is one where you can laugh at these and move on. This is a very critical attribute one must develop to be an online dater at any age.
Excerpted from Memoirs of a Senior Daterby RJ SCAFFIDI Copyright © 2010 by RJ Scaffidi. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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