Truth-telling

Today I accused Mr. Match of lying on his Match.com profile. For body type, he checked "A few extra pounds." Trust me, I know guys with "a few extra pounds", and he ain't one of 'em.

Okay, so maybe he wasn't lying. Maybe he's the only person on Match, male or female, who's really telling the truth. The "body type" field is one of those with a pull-down list from which you may choose one option. The options are: No Answer, Slender, Athletic and toned, About average, A few extra pounds, Big and beautiful, Full-figured, Curvy, Stocky, Heavyset, Other. Other? With all those options, what on earth is Other? I'd certainly pick No Answer before I'd pick Other!

I said I'm About average, because I look at the obesity epidemic in the U.S. today and I'm on the low side of About average. On another site a while back, I said I had a body mass index of <25, since 25 is "overweight". Yeah, some piece of Javascript can make me feel better about my weight! Okay, my BMI is 24.3, but that's below 25! And I only fudged on my height by 1/8 inch.

And while we're talking about truths, there's the interest field on your profile. Those include a number of check boxes, so you can enter multiple interests, such as book club, coffee, camping, cooking, dining out . . . . Mr. Match says the women he notices seem to all be interested in camping. He thinks it's a little bogus, all these single women hauling their pop-up campers down to the campground and spending the weekend alone in the woods. Hey, Darlin', you missed the point. They want you hauling the pop-up and grilling the salmon and slaying the bears or shooing the javelinas.

I've checked Hiking as one of my interests. That doesn't mean I do a lot of it. It's one-hundred-and-ten-frigging-degrees. The overnight low was eighty-nine. I'm not hiking now. And I have only gone hiking twice since I moved here 6-1/2 years ago. But I love to hike. Take me back to ol' Virginny, and I'll hike your feet off. It's still an interest.

I never check Dancing, and I never wink at or respond to anyone who lists dancing as an interest. I'm a musician. I can move my booty, I just can't move it when the dance form doesn't have a downbeat that's anywhere near the downbeat of the music. (Took swing dance lessons once about three lifetimes ago. Failed miserably. And there wasn't even a final exam!)

Oh, Mr. Match did tell the truth about piercings. He said he has a pierced ear. It was that or be called "chicken" by his fellow pilots when they were on a "can we drive management crazy" kick. But to his eternal credit, he has not yet, in almost a month, worn anything in it. I figure one of these days he's gonna show up for one of our dates with some big sparkly, dangling thing hanging from it, just to get my goat.

So I'll close the truth-telling segment with a short story. There was the guy I met on Match two years ago. We met for dinner and 3/4 of the way through dinner he admitted to having subtracted ten years from his age on his profile. TEN! Silly, gullible me - I figured it was just a finger-check when he was completing his profile and he couldn't figure out how to go back and fix it. Well, we dated for a couple of months and he also could never figure out how to take his profile down even though he was dating me exclusively. (I think.) So that finger-check theory works, right? I broke up with him after I realized he liked the grape waaaaay more than I was comfortable with for someone who was going to be in my life. Oh yeah, there was the other thing — He was separated and told me he was getting a divorce. Then we went to homecoming at the UofA and hung out in the ATO tent, and he told these old buddies, "Yeah, I've got a wife and kids back in California." Ummmm, what does that make me? [If you answered "foolish", you win the prize.]