Do I get a thumbs up after this?

I promised myself I wasn’t going to do this. When I started “the online dating thing” a month ago, I said I wasn’t going to blog about a specific person because you never now what will happen in the future, who reads this thing, and how what you say will be perceived. But this story is too good not to write about it. I won’t mention any names or divulge personal information. The guys I have dated are glad to read this. Oh, you know who you are! No animals were hurt in the developments of this story. Sometimes I wanted to. Any similarities with any real people are not coincidental. This is the truth. I couldn’t make this stuff up. I apologize in advance to anyone that I may offend and for the length of this post.

My online dating days usually start by checking my email and then browsing to see if there are any cute, I mean, interesting guys out there. One morning there is a short email from a guy that shall remain nameless, maybe I’ll call him Mr. X. That’s good. Every time I get an email, I always look at their profiles before answering just to make sure there are no red flags waving. Unless he is drop dead gorgeous then I turn in to a send-button-maniac. But he wasn’t, he was cute though. So I’m reading his profile and he says that he has 4 kids that live with him and he has 3 pictures in his profile, one of himself and two of his kids. As soon as I saw that I immediately went DELETE.

Through out the day I kept thinking about him. I can’t tell you why. It is not that his first email was that great or he was gorgeous but something in his picture, his eyes, his smile, who knows, was telling me that he was a very nice, fun person and I should email him back. The little voice in my head called Nikki, ok not so little, was saying, “Don’t do it…” But I kept thinking about it. Finally I said “Fug it! I’m going to email him.” So I did. I wanted to kept things clear from the start so I wrote

I got to be honest with you. I don't like kids and when I read your in profile that you had 4 living at home I ran away as fast as I could. But for some reason something was telling to email you. So here I am. I am probably going to hate myself after hitting the Send button but here I go.

After that email I thought there is no way he is going to email me back but he did. He said my email was funny and we kept exchanging emails for a while. After a few emails we decided to meet in person. We set a date, a time and a place. Everything was set. I sent him another email 3 days before our date and among other things I told him about my accident and that as result of that, I walk with a cane just so he wouldn’t be surprised when he saw me. He didn’t respond for a whole day. I was going crazy. Finally the day before our date, he emailed saying that he was sorry but he had to cancel our date because he had to go to a conference that he was trying to get out of but couldn’t . If I was still interested, I should email him back on Wednesday after he got back. Never mentioned anything about the cane and left it up to me to contact him. Hmm…

Now I have to be honest with you. That got me really depressed. Not because I was bummed out about the guy, I barely knew him and he was so totally wrong for me. I was sad thinking that the same thing was going to happen with a lot of guys. That after they knew about the cane, they were going to write me off. DELETE for me! But I slept it off and the next day I wrote him a reply that said

I am sad that this conference sprung up on you and you had to cancel our plans. I hope I'm wrong about this but it was a nice coincidence that this came up right came up right after I told you that I use a cane. What's funny to me is that you didn't mind that I didn't like kids but it did matter that I walk slower than most people. At the same time, I'm glad this happened now because I got to see the real you and it saved me a lot of trouble. You know, all of us have flaws, some are more visible than others, but if we don't accept other's faults sometimes we miss some of the best things in life. Again, I hope I'm wrong about this and I'm not overreacting but if I'm right, I hope this is not what you are teaching your kids.

Ahhh… I got it out of my system and everything was all right with the world again. Take that, bastardo! I put myself in the guys’ place and thought that maybe I was putting them on the spot by not saying anything about the cane until the last minute before we met and they couldn’t back down. I decided to add a little about the accident and mention the cane in my profile (in a very funny way, by the way, maybe I’ll put in on my blog sometime) so they knew from the get go and I have met some very nice people.

Anyway, getting back to my story… You thought it was over, huh? The best is yet to come. I had written him off. He was dead to me. No more Mr. X to think about. The days went peacefully by and the online dating saga continued at a steady pace like nothing had happened. And then the unthinkable happens. I get an email from Mr. X on the day he said he was going to be back from his “conference.” His email said

Hello it's me again. I can't believe you thought that about me. I was going to surprise you with my problem. I was born without thumbs. I would never do that to anyone. You really hurt my feelings. Sorry about the disappointment.

AHHHH! What to do? What to do? I couldn’t believe it. Is it true? Is he really thumbless or is he testing me to see what am I going to say next? The games people play. Mostly in my head, I know, but still. I immediately went back to his pictures to see if his thumbs made an appearance but I’m not that lucky. His thumbs were a mystery to me. I wrote and rewrote my reply and finally this is what I sent

Oh no! I'm really embarrassed now. Sorry I overreacted but it was a little fishy that you didn't mention anything about a personal thing I told you about and all of a sudden canceled our plans for a conference you had never mentioned. I apologize for hurting your feelings but you hurt mine too, even if you didn't mean to. Now I want to meet you to see if the no thumbs thing is true or you are pulling my leg. I'm sorry if it is true but its hard to read something serious in your emails with your face smiling at me. [His picture is next to the emails he sends] So if you still want to meet after making a complete ass of myself, let me know.

Completely embarrassed,
Aynex

P.S. - Now we have to be together for the rest of our lives so we can tell the grandchildren the story of how we met.

Ok, I have to admit, that last part about the grandchildren went a little over board. Maybe I scared him off with that last sentence because he didn’t respond for days and then yesterday he deleted his profile from the site. Oh wow! If he wanted to be unforgettable, he did it. I’ll never forget the thumbless Mr. X and I will always have his picture on my mind with a foggy cloud over his hands hiding the answers to the questions that I will always have on my mind. Does he have thumbs? Can he hitchhike? Can he give me the thumbs up/down? How will I ever know if he approves/disapproves of something? From now on that should be the first question I ask a guy by email. Do you have thumbs?