This is No PRESENT!

I think it's only the single people that really notice just how married the general population is... Look, I know there are benefits of legal partnerships, but give me a break - and give the single girls some credit. We know a few things - and sometimes, if you can believe it - we're even happy.

Tonight, I went out for coffee with a friend I don't see very much. We mostly discussed relationships of sorts... How our friend got married and had a small heart attack because some aspect of the wedding wasn't according to her personal Hoyle... We discussed her cousin - coincidentally, an ex-boyfriend of my sister's... who is a really nice man with a really deep-seeded problem with anger... He's cute, so he gets a lot of dates... But he's got issues, so he gets his heart broken a lot. We talked about my friend's last date - who scared her because he was interested in instant matrimony...We talked about my friend's sister and brother-in-law, their new baby, and their idea of an excellent Birthday gift.

They gave my friend a one-year's subscription to E-Harmony.

Think about that for a minute. "Happy Birthday! I want you to be as happy as I am - in the way that I've chosen - so to do that, here's a coupon for the L-U-V!"

I've noticed that many married people - more specifically - many people in general - try to create the rest of us in their own image. Where I know they mean well, sometimes the road to Hell really IS paved with good intentions. Since my friend is gracious and kind (much more so than I), I decided to glaze over the gaul of such a gift.

"So how's that going?"

For my friend, E-Harmony has been a lesson in tolerance, patience, and fact-finding. She recounted several stories of the difficulties she's faced with the site, including the seventeen mile long profile survey she had to endure at the beginning.

"Um, you know I'm really not racist, right?"

It's true. I have never known this woman to be racist. In fact, she barely says a negative word about anyone (including her family, who gave her a gift certificate to E-Harmony for her birthday... I'm still not over this, as you can tell.)

"I know...."

"Well, one match came from my town... In the profile, he said he was white. But in his photo - he was definitely not white..." (note: this is not a comment on anything other than false testimony - so please just think of this in the context of the story)

I made a face, "That's hard to hide..."

"Yeah, I'm not really into E-Harmony."

Where it was probably a typo, I definitely see her point. On one hand, finding out your Next Destiny is untruthful before you actually meet in person is kind of reassuring... On the other hand, discovering any untruth is no picnic.

I remember one Christmas, years ago, when my older sister (the same one who dated my friend's cousin) decided she was going to make these unpainted dowel dolls for my nephews and neice. My oldest nephew, then maybe 7, tore open the package, held up the dowel-doll (seriously - it was made of dowels and connectors.) and exclaimed, "What? This is no PRESENT!!!"

Oh if only we could say that at our age!