Laughing Faces

What is up with the universe? No I mean it. What gives?

As soon as ... and I mean as soon as ... I drove away from his apartment complex he had rejoined (or maybe he never resigned) one of those online dating services.

So you are asking: How do I know? And, what was I doing perusing the catalog of eligible sixty-somethings in a part of the northeast some 200 plus miles away?

Simple.

First, I am not a paying member. Nope. Not for me. Five years ago, well that was another story. Yep, back then I went out with ... count 'em ... two and a half dozen unattached guys everywhere from here to Buenos Aires. And to be honest, only a handful were what I'd call datable. One is still a dear friend. But the others? I can honestly say that there are around 24 women scattered over the country that are waking up every morning with a huge smile on their faces and screaming: THANK GOD HE'S NOT SLEEPING IN MY BED ANYMORE!

So why the look-see?

Simple.

My darling friend, and fellow BSer, recently parted ways with her online dating partner after two years. They had grown apart. And if I do say so myself, weren't really headed in the same direction anyway. But that is not for me to judge. Anyhoo, she checked the site absentmindedly and drumroll ... amidst the sadness and crocodile tears that were streaming down the man's cheeks was his picture as big as day: Active within 24 hours.

So I said to myself: Hmmmm. Weren't those emails from the dating site in his gmail inbox when I last visited? You know right under the letter from his daughter that he asked me to read? No. He wouldn't be searching while he was professing that I was the love of his life. That he couldn't believe his good fortune that we reconnected again after 17 years. That I was: Easy to love and that he'd never let me go.

So he must have done an about face. Or was searching all along. Just in cases. But no. In one of his final communications he emphasized that it might take another few months to appreciate me and we should just be friends. Appreciate me? He has had, off and on, 39 years to figure me out. But I digress.

He wrote that he is a simple man and wants to focus on two things: his thirty year old daughter and managing his shrinking retirement funds which were downsized by the shift in the markets a few years ago. Out with his love life.

But I looked anyway. And lo and behold his gorgeous eyes were staring back at me from among the lineup of eligibles in his neck of the woods. ACTIVE WITHIN 24 HOURS. Whoa ...

In a nutshell, I was saved by his tantrum in the car a few weeks ago. Big time. His head in his hands.

So who is smiling now? Me!

Not because I am happy with this turn of events. I am not. I truly thought this was our forever. But because it is early. Any later and I would be devastated.

To my tomorrows ...