HOME | POLITICS | SPORTS | LIFE | SCI/TECH | OPEDS | HELPFUL TIPS
|
Jan 1, 2004 Eight years ago I was Mr. Mom with full custody of three children and a fourth, who had graduated from High School but was still around for awhile. Being busy with work and Dadhood, I decided to look into the internet as a source of interaction with females and perhaps even a means of finding my “soulmate”. Herein is a short series about that experience, with names and other details changed to protect both the innocent and guilty. BECKY’S KING Ah, the joy of HTML-enabled chatrooms! I began my sojourn into the online dating game by chatting up ladies on chatrooms, preferably those within which one could have fun with HTML commands that would do cool things like make your words change colors and fonts and flash, etc. I would enter the chatroom with a flashing “beep”, then the words “up antenna” in tiny print and finally I emerged as “Radar”. After a few days of going onto the room I had a terrible traffic accident and found myself unable to work for several months. Thus “Radar” began to spend more and more time online. Becky was a witty and poetic chatter with whom I made a connection. I knew she was from Australia and would be on either very late or very early, from my point of view. We soon became pretty fond of each other and made “dates” to meet at certain times. Now, I am a Christian and did not go online for the cybersex stuff but we were getting rather romantic, to the point I would actually call her on the phone. We would speak to each other in “whisper mode” much of the time, a way in which only she and I could see what we had posted. But other chatters would still keep trying to talk to us, for she and I were both well known on the site. So we conspired so that “Becky” would go online as “ForMyKing” and I would go online as “BK” (for Becky’s King) and we could chat without being constantly inundated with comments from others. Becky and I discussed her upcoming trip to the states, how we would meet and so on. She had a picture of me, and had described herself to me but never sent me a picture. I naturally kept bugging her for the picture so that I could see the lovely girl with whom I had exchanged amorous poetry and prose. After two months of billing and cooing she laid the big surprise on me. She was 19 years old! I had thought that she was an instructor at her university when in fact she was a Second Year student. I was 44 at the time. Despite our agreement in many ways, this was far more difficult to overcome than mere miles. The relationship had to end, and to make it less painful I left the chatroom in which we had met and began to go to my second favorite chatroom instead. I will always remember Becky very fondly. Had she been, say 39 rather than 19 there is a very good chance my online search would have succeeded at the very outset. THE SINGER She called herself “BettyDavisEyes” and had a very quick wit. We would talk now and then, but one evening she asked me if she could call me. I told her that I thought the man should call, and she promptly sent me her telephone number. The woman who answered at that number had the sexiest voice I ever heard! It sent shivers up and down my spine. We agreed to take turns calling each other and every day we would converse for a short time, although to save money we spent most of our time talking over the internet at the chatroom. Her name was Mona and I found myself getting more and more fascinated by her. She loved most of the same music I preferred, Christian Rock music. She not only was familiar with groups like White Heart and Petra, she had been a backup singer on two albums I had in my collection and was well acquainted with some musicians I appreciated. Talk about cool! She played keyboards, sang and wrote music. I am a musician from a family of musicians and this was great news indeed! Mona sent me a picture in which she was a bit overweight, probably voluptuous is a better term, but still very attractive. She thought I was a “hunk” and the level of our conversations sometimes became rather intimate. She was unmarried, four years younger than me, willing to relocate and apparently as in to me as I was in to her. I was still unable to work, but my rehabilitation was going well and soon I was able to cast off my sling and move my left arm without aid. It was time to consider meeting the Mona girl. When I suggested I was ready, she was ecstatic and insisted upon buying a ticket and sending it to me. She lived close to Orlando, in a little community called Indian Rocks Beach in what she described as a “beach cottage”. I hoped that my Christian character would be strong enough to keep me from getting too physical with her on my visit, for I had not dated anyone over 20 years. I was certainly out of practice! Imagine my eager anticipation as I boarded the plane to fly out to meet the “girl of my dreams”! I found myself imagining that the plane would crash and I would die before ever meeting her. But I shook off the thought, prayed for a safe trip and enjoyed the view of the scenery from the plane on the way in to Atlanta where I had to change planes. Atlanta was terribly hot and humid and the two- hour wait was almost unbearable. I drank an overpriced soda and a beef sandwich and read through a sports magazine I picked up in the airport. I kept pulling Mona’s picture out of my pocket and trying to imagine the woman as real flesh and blood. The connecting flight began to load, I again had a window seat but it was beginning to get dark and the scenery was not of great interest. Now all my thoughts were of Mona. We had planned that she would be carrying a big helium filled balloon and that I would wear a bright green shirt so that we could easily find each other. It was past nine o’clock at night when the jet landed. My seat was at the back of the tail section and not wanting to push through everyone, I was the last passenger to get off of the plane. The long wait had become almost delicious, tantalizing. I set off to find the balloon girl, wearing my bright green shirt. I will tell you the rest of the story next time. ------------ About the author: Kimbal Ross Binder is a husband of one wife and parent of six child units of various sizes. He is a tennis bum, karaoke singer, punster and a reformed liberal who now admires Rush Limbaugh and hates to miss Fox News in the evening. You can pass along plaudits and invectives to: radarbinder@comcast.net Comment on this column in the forum. ------------ |
||||||
|
|
|||||||
|
