Tuesday, February 17, 2009

The Man from the Internet is Not My Boyfriend.

There comes a time in any socially awkward, unattractive-in-high-school-but-came-good-eventually, single gal’s life, when she muses, “I wonder if my boyfriend is in the Internet. What if he’s been there all along and I missed him because I was spending all my energy waiting to be trapped in a broken-down lift with the guy I have a crush on for hours until we have nothing left to do but make out?”

I don’t think you’re supposed to meet the people that live in the Internet. I know we’re living in future times, but unless the Jetsons did it, I’m not interested. One bad decision on the other side of that Narnia-wardrobe, and you upset the natural order of things.

For one thing, it makes me nervous thinking that all of the nerds in the world will meet and marry and be too loved up to strive for anything and then we’ll have no one left to cure cancer, which will be annoying.

It’s been getting kind of tedious waiting for my new boyfriend to bump into me at the supermarket.

Particularly in the bread aisle.

Ain’t nothin’ sexy about a gal who takes 25 minutes to decide between Whole Grain, 7 Grains, and Stone Mill Grain.

I figured since I’d started a blog, I was modern enough to fire up the information superhighway, and see what was on offer. I have to be honest, it‘s slim pickins‘ out there.

I did find a pool of self-proclaimed “easygoing” types, “new to this”, sick of the “pub-and-club scene“, who write “your” when it’s supposed to be “you’re”; or “ur” when it’s supposed to be “you’re” or “your”. Call me picky, but I refuse to back down on the Your/ You’re thing and I have a 14 038 members of the Facebook group, “Good Grammar is Hot” to back me up on that one.

The You’re/ Your embargo puh-retty much eliminated everyone on the Internet for me.
Which left the following categories: people too smart for me (see aforementioned point about cancer. I will NOT be distracting our nation’s nerds!). People I know (AWKWARD CITY. Delete! Block! Already been there in one case!)
Andpeopleupforit. There, said it. This category is the blanket over all subcategories.

Look.
I know you’re supposed to strike up a chat-versation, build to a phone call or two, exchange photos and then arrange to meet in a restaurant holding a rose and your hopes up high.

OR.

Or.

You can rip that band-aid clean off and agree to meet a motorbike-riding stranger in a park. And that's what I did.

“I’ll take the ’let’s stop living like a Victorian lady for five minutes’ briefcase, thanks Andrew O’Keefe.”

All those years hearing “don’t talk to strangers” over and over again, wasted.
Sorry, Mum. Sorry Miss McCormick, Mrs Golic, Miss McCormick again, (primary school teachers prep, 1, 2.) Sorry, Benita from Play School. I don’t know what I was thinking. Well, apart from, “you know what I haven’t done in my youth is pash a stranger in a park”. That's pretty much the beginning, middle and end of what I was thinking.

It doesn't matter how, or why or even what the hell, but I went to the park. On my own. YES, I went to the park! Do you think I backed out? I went down to that park, my friend, and all I can say is thank god for the park ranger for shutting down that plan.
Well, shutting it down in my mind. The stranger hadn't arrived yet, and I hadn’t seen a park ranger since I was 8 and watching Yogi Bear on Agro’s Cartoon Connection; and I've seen how angry they can get about pic-a-nic baskets, let alone random internet park rendezvous. I took it as a sign to reshape the plan into, “Let’s Meet a Stranger at the Movies!”

The thing about waiting 45 minutes in a shopping complex for a stranger on a motorbike you’ve exchanged three sentences with to navigate the city during Chinese New Year is, you have a lot of alone time with that squishy pink thing in your head. Particularly after you give up trying to decide whether it’s better to mack with a stranger during “Bride Wars” or “Slumdog Millionaire”. And so meeting a stranger from the Internet, whilst at first seeming impulsive, exciting, audacious, suddenly seems like something good girls sure as heck DO NOT WANT TO DO. EVER.

I almost vomited four times before he arrived. I thought of Mum, and the Prep, 1, 2 teachers and Benita. They’d be so mad at me for this. Like seriously, yelled-at, put-in-the-corner-with-no-playlunch, not-allowed-to-look-through-the-arch-window mad.

But I was at the point of no return. And then he walked in, wearing cargo pants, a motorbike helmet under his arm and NOT looking at all like the picture on the profile. N.Q.R.

Well, for the sake of the dregs of the fantasy I did NOT bolt. I got up, said hello to the stranger from the Internet, to whom I had not had the guts to even give my name, because my mum says you should never give personal details out on the Internet, and forgot all of my objectives.
I opened my mouth to try and somehow reopen the internal Bride Wars/ Slumdog debate I’d been having with myself when the stranger said,
“You know. I don’t want to waste your time. I might go.”
“Okaybye.”

Thank. God.
I turned 180 degrees and ran until I somehow ended up in Sanity. Not insanity, like crazy. Sanity, the multimedia store. Where, ironically, I laughed to myself like the madwoman in the attic for a good five minutes before I went up to the counter pretending to enquire about Flight of the Conchords.

* * *
I did receive word from the motorbike-riding, profile-photo-faking Internet man. Apparently I was “cute” but he'd got nervous that day, and was hot after all that motorbike-riding.
I have decided to see this as a win. Although he’d spelt “nervous” wrong. I'm scarred for life, but I'll take cute.

I stopped browsing the manalogue after that in case I agreed to something else ridiculous. Plus, when I logged in the other day, I discovered the one month free trial I didn’t know I was on was up and that I would have to start paying for correspondence with potential suitors.

I’m not sorry to inform, I will not be paying for love unless Andy Lew and Pete Laser appear to whisk me off to Chadstone with a credit card, a catchy jingle and 15 minutes on the clock.

If anyone is looking for me, I’ll be sitting in a lift, waiting for RomCom Man to get in, and then for it to break down.
 
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