If Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder, When will He be Holdin’ Me? (Excerpt from A Boomer’s Adventures in Cyber-Dating)

Welcome all seekers of cyber love and romance. 

It’s been said there's a soul mate out there for every one of us. No matter if you look like Quasimodo, smell like a yak, have more hair than an orangutan, or less teeth than a Louisiana gator hunter, the guy or gal of your dreams is somewhere waiting for you with a hump massage, aromatic shampoo, a stiff back comb, and a dental referral. This is very good information to know. I'm comforted by this. We're all wonderfully made by a loving God who has put it upon another’s heart to see beyond our warts and wrinkles and get a glimpse of our inner beauty.

Can I get an Amen?

One factor that plays a major role in our quest for true love is patience. I was going to add a second, panic, but we are not that desperate are we? Of course we aren’t.

Patience:  The ability to endure delay.

Ouch. Endure and delay are words most of us aren't fond of. But we forget that a simple jaunt to the 7-11 by our ancestors involved hours of staring at the hind quarters of a horse, and a trip abroad on an ocean-going vessel with fewer creature comforts than the local Motel 6 could take weeks. How’s that for patience? I imagine the lovely lad or lassie that we wooed with our perfect penmanship and flowery repartee might be married with children long before our declaration of undying love was delivered by the local postman.

A sweet lady sent me the following question on cyber-dating:

“Guys flood my inbox with email, but before I can even answer they send another saying they are moving on. What gives?”

My response was as follows:

“When wandering through a valley awash with thousands of beautiful flowers of every color and hue, some just don't have the patience to wait for a particular rose to bloom.”

Patience (along with Elvis) has left the building. We live in a society of instant gratification, instant oatmeal and instant messaging. We get miffed if someone at Starbucks orders an extra drizzle on their mocha frappucinno, or question the basic addition skills of the person in front of us in the 15-items-or-less lane at the grocery store who has obviously overstepped the boundaries of all fairness by having ignored the posted limit.

 

Patience, when it comes to romantic endeavors, is of the utmost importance. I have been accused of having little (or none). I’ll admit the lady was right. I had a propensity to slap a big old Evinrude outboard on the row boat of love and strangle the throttle for all it’s worth.

Do you rush into relationships? Maybe your biological Timex is ticking so loud it’s keeping you awake at night, or perhaps your mother is getting tired of doing your laundry and wants to turn the doublewide’s spare room into a Wayne Newton shrine.

Whatever the case, you must learn to gently tap the brakes of your emotions or run the risk of whizzing by the huge red flags alerting you to the fact that the swiftly approaching bridge of happiness is closed for repairs. Stop and smell the roses so you’ll be certain that nasty virtual smell is actually fertilizer and not something your future love bunny has stepped in and will never be able to completely scrape off the bottom of their shoe.

Crawling through the virtual weeds in order to find the perfect flower takes loads of patience and persistence. This can be harder than finding the perfect pair of jeans. You ladies should relate to this. They shouldn’t be too tight or clingy as to restrict freedom of movement. They must have a little room to grow; be soft and comfortable, like an old friend; the stitching strong; the materials impeccable; not so long that we step all over them; the right color; the right style; hold us in all the right places; flatter us; make us feel good about ourselves; and never wear out. Impossible you say?

Hmmm…  Impossible for us, perhaps, but with God, all things are possible.

Choose wisely my friends.

K.G.

Klaatu Barada Nikto

Live long and prosper my lonely cyber- cadets. I applaud you as you search the outer reaches of cyber-space and beyond in an attempt to find truth, justice and good Chinese take-out.

Been pondering this whole alien thing (outer space ones, not illegal ones; though the “illegal” case could be made for both, I suppose). In a HuffPost/YouGov survey, one fourth of Americans said that they think aliens have visited us, while a third said “Yeah, when pigs fly.” The rest of the respondents were trying to get their medical marijuana cards and really just wanted to find the nearest Jack in the Box. Among those who were convinced that life exists on other planets, 45 percent said that aliens visit Earth often and possibly own one of the local Quicky-Marts.

Even noted Physicist Stephen Hawking (when not hitting on women) took time to respond. Mr. Hawking, in that weird, robot-like, digitally-voice, said that intelligent life on other planets probably exists, but that if little green men had visited Earth it would have been a "much more unpleasant" experience than any UFO sightings. So I guess being “tied down and probed” could be filed under “not that unpleasant”, especially if they bought you a Proud Whopper and dropped you off at the front door after.

College grads that were surveyed were more willing than non-college graduates to believe that life exists in some form elsewhere in the universe, although no more eager to admit that aliens have actually visited. Their reasoning, “Hot chicks just don’t go for crazy guys.”

Older respondents were much more likely than younger ones to state firmly that Earth has played Motel 6 to alien visitors, but this could be due to easier access to prescription medication.

I think this whole alien craze is just another way to keep our spirits up when we fail at dating sites like eHarmony and Tinder. We are so desperate to believe that there is someone out there for us, our “willing to travel for love” distance has expanded to include the rest of the universe. As for me, well, I have a hard time driving twenty minutes to get a Mocha Frappuccino, and I never really cared for girls with tentacles.

My hypothesis:
Aliens have been visiting the earth not to poke and prod us (though this sounds like good clean fun), but to dump their garbage here. It’s their radioactive trash in the atmosphere that is making us lose all common sense an accuse each other of being racist, homophobic, and overenthusiastic about World Cup soccer (Stephen King; you may use this for your next novel for a nominal fee).

K.G.