Winked

I can't believe I haven't made it here all week. I really have to learn the future post thing so at least those of you who kindly check in every day get a YouTube or something. As for what has had me so occupied, that's another post that I'm finding difficult to write so let me tell you my little story about personal ads.

Don't ask me how I ended up there. I think I followed a random link from the home page, but however it happened, I found myself at Match.com. Curious, I punched in my criteria, woman looking for man between 53 and 65 and damn if there weren't several just in this little town that I live in. I signed up for the 'free' account because that's the only way you can read the profiles and it's a long and tedious process.

Questions to answer and checklists to check and little essays about why you're there. I skipped uploading the picture. In the first place I don't have a recent one and in the second, I'm so unphotogenic that the old ones I have are terrible. Even keeping my responses to a minimum, it took ten minutes but it was worth it to see how the senior citizen set pitches for a date. Hell, some of those guys looked really good. Too good for me really. I suspect I wouldn't measure up to the girl of their dreams.

I was surprised a few days later to get a 'wink.' This apparently is the initial indication of interest and Eaglerider winked me. His profile was pretty hot and I didn't want to ignore him in any event, so I winked him back. He emailed me shortly thereafter and it was then that I discovered if I wanted to read it or respond I had to join the premium account, which is pretty expensive -- about a $100 for six months and $35 for a single month.

For all I know he's a paid shill for the service. I mean who winks at a person who left the barest profile possible, without a photo? Still I feel a little guilty. If he was for real, he'll think I read his email and didn't like him and am so rude as to simply ignore it. But there's no way I'm going to spend that much to send an email to a guy who probably wouldn't want to date me anyway. Guess from now on, I'll just stick to reading Craig's List for my amusement.