Waiting On The Winks

Day 1
Huh. Must not be too many people on today, since I have yet to receive a single freakin’ wink or message. By clicking on the “Who’s Viewed Me” button, it is apparent several people have viewed my carefully crafted profile, so what the hell. I decided to dig a little deeper and click on their profiles to see what’s so great about them that they didn’t find me worthy of their advances. First one is cute, maybe even hot. Whatever, I don’t want a hot guy anyway. Hot=cocky=not for me. Guy number two is not even cute so guess what- I am glad he didn’t contact me. After that I lost interest and decided I really didn’t care why they hadn’t contacted me, they all sucked. Plus – maybe they were just taking their time crafting intelligent and interesting emails to impress me; my profile was impressive and could easily be intimidating for someone with less writing/grammar skills. That had to be it, I just needed to give them a little more time. So – with no intention of sending winks or initiating emails, I set off to view my matches. (I certainly wasn’t making the first move – I was lonely, not desperate.)

Waiting
Well, my profile had been published for 48 hours, with my pictures visible for at least 36 of them. And according to my “Who’s Viewed Me”, my profile was getting some clicks, but no one had contacted me. Pictures too posed? My sister boldly admitted my new haircut was “not her favorite”, apparently it isn’t too popular with my fellow online daters either. But there are other pictures up with different hairstyles – of course my niece is in one of them, but I shook that thought – no time for kid haters. Maybe people are taking my “Things I Could Live Without” category which includes gems like “room temperature milk, circus peanuts, and NASCAR” a little too seriously. I let out an exasperated sigh and thought out loud, “Holy crap it’s a joke, get a sense of humor people. Yea for Tony Stewart (he’s a NASCAR guy, right?) going in a circle, as you gulp your warm milk”. Goodness. Guess there are two things I don’t have time for, kid haters and boring. No sense of humor having douches.

The First Wink
Well, it had been a couple hours, so I headed over to the computer to give the mouse a little nudge. I don’t want to keep my swarms of gentleman callers waiting, after all. Sweet dog, an email alert announcing I had received a wink. My first wink! How exciting. Crap sticks – no picture, that’s not a good sign. I don’t like to think looks mean a whole lot to me, if you ask my sister (you know, the haircut hater) she would insist I date very average looking guys. So when someone doesn’t have a picture I automatically think the worst (unless of course it is because he is so gorgeous that he wants me to not be distracted so I am free to fall in love with him for his personality, not his dark brown silky hair, dark green eyes, dimple and, er, back to reality) – while I’m not a dog or anything I was pretty sure I would not be getting winked at if he was indeed the aforementioned case of sexy hot man incognito as average guy.

Anyway – there is no picture and I come to the conclusion it wasn’t likely that it was because all of his headshots are on loan to Brad Pitt’s agent. So, what’s the problem? Cross eyed? Glass eye?? Three eyes??? My imagination goes wild. So – I write him back and ask if he has a picture. His response: “Yes, but it is not very good”. Again I think out loud (which is very different than “talking to myself” because people who do that are weird and make me uncomfortable) “I’m sorry – what?!”, I blurted. I just could not comprehend having only ONE picture of yourself to distribute to the entire world of on-line dating in hopes of finding a wife, and it’s NOT GOOD. He was probably just being too critical of himself. Yup, that must be it…and then I opened the attachment. Goo – not that good. Grainy quality, taken of himself by himself in a basement?! (His mom’s, quite possibly.) NEXT.

Pictures were a particular area of concern. I’m not necessarily talking about ugly, decent, hot, etc. I just expected that people would have several photos, and not all self portraits with their arm stretched out as far as possible, looking up or with their cell phone in the bathroom mirror (oh yea – you’d be surprised). Really, they don’t have one freakin’ friend, family member, co-worker to snap a photo of them? Okay, so they are not particularly proud of their status as an “online dater”. First, get over it. Second, you don’t have one single opportunity when you’re with your friends/family that it would be relatively normal to take a picture. A night out with the boys, a cousins birthday party (hell, even a second-cousin if that’s what it takes). If that’s not an option (which worried me in itself), get someone to take a picture of you – tell them your practicing for your badge picture at work, a new drivers license picture – I don’t really give a rats ass what they say – just get a few pictures. And if you are desperate enough to take them of yourself – put down the cell phone, step away from the mirror (especially the bathroom one) and get a flippin’ camera. Why don’t you own a camera anyway? Its time. At the very least get a disposable, yup they still make ‘em – take your happy ass over to Walmart and buy one. And hell, while you are there ask the greeter to take a picture of you – what’s it going to hurt. I mean really – you can’t honestly care what Velma, screaming “Welcome to Walmart” a few notches louder than necessary really thinks of you. Better yet – get a real camera, one with a timer – set it up at the least obvious “I’m taking this picture of myself” spot you can find and click away. Honestly. Sorry, I feel passionately about this. Well – so much for the excitement of my first wink. 

And so would begin the first of countless “I’m not interested” Why? “I don’t think we are a good match, good luck in your search” clicks.