How We Met Pt. 2
Laurel I didn't realize it at first, but I was looking for something when I decided not to message first. I predicted that he would message me, and when, and why it would take so long. I was prepared to be wrong. But my prediction was based on two things - his profile, and my own assumptions. Based on his profile, I assumed he'd be like me. And since I felt an unfamiliar prickle of excitement when I saw his profile, then surely he would have felt something, too. I'd spent months trying to find what I saw in his profile. We were so alike, even in how we presented ourselves to the world. I knew precisely how rare this type of person was; and if, indeed, we matched in that, then surely he would recognize it too.
It was a rather faulty way to make a judgment, but when I saw the message in my inbox, my instincts were proven right - at least to some extent. And something else, too. If I was right about how he would go about contacting me, then that meant I was right about something else. He was like me. A lot like me.
I pulled up the message, and the first thing that struck me was the length. It wasn't a short "Hi" or "How are you?" it was a full-length message, with actual questions. Questions that told me he had read all the way through my profile, and was paying attention when he did. Intelligent, thoughtful questions, using the information I'd already given in my profile as a starting point.
This was the kind of message I could respond to. It was the kind of message I'd been hoping for. This one could communicate, and well, through text. He thought before he spoke, and when he did speak it wasn't mindless drivel or dead-end questions. He asked because he wanted the answers, not just because he wanted to talk to me. This message was proof of what he said in his profile - he was a writer. I'd spoken to others before who claimed that, but whose writing skills informed me that, if they did write, they weren't very serious about it. That meant he was also telling the truth. Another point in his favor.
I knew when I saw how long the message was that I was going to respond. I suppose I could even say that I knew I'd respond when I read his profile the first time. The sight of the message didn't surprise me. What did surprise me was the fact that he was three hours ahead of me, and he hadn't sent anything before I went to bed the night before. And I had stayed up later than I intended, hoping. That meant he had thought long and hard about something. I guessed it was what to say, since his message was so well-written.
I dismissed that from my mind, except for the determination to answer in a way that meant he wouldn't have wasted his time. And I wrote back, in the few hours before I had to leave for work. I've never been particularly good at asking other people questions about themselves. I've always done much better when they volunteer such information to me, and all that's required of me is to sit and listen. But I noticed right away that he seemed far more interested in asking questions about me than he was in offering the same information about himself. In that, he was also different. And that made me curious.
I read my message several times, checking for punctuation and spelling errors, and then clicked send.
I went to work that day feeling excited, and a little nervous.
Seth In all honesty, I probably should have been more excited to wake up the next day. After all, the chance that I had sent a message to my future wife is an exciting prospect. But when I woke the next day I had nothing more than the general ‘everyday’ feeling on me. I had sent dozens of messages that never got returned on various online dating sites; the odds weren’t in my favor that I had received a response. That is why I didn’t check my email that morning. I should have, surely, but I did not. It was a game, almost: how long could I hold out until I saw whether my time had been worth its spending? I lost that game more times than not, but… I also had a feeling about this one, a feeling that she was a little different from all the others I had messaged. When I at last checked my email that around noon I found… nothing. Nothing at all.
I was disappointed. I wondered if she might not have thought the message worth responding to, or maybe had not even read it all. What I did not think of, at first, was that she lived in Oregon and I in Ohio, which meant that she was three hours behind me. That was why I, if I had waited just another hour, would have had a much better start to my day than I actually did; but I had work to do, and I was off before I ever received her response, wondering why exactly it was I wasted my time on the online world.
It wasn’t until much later, when I finally got home, that I realized my mistake. I had a message waiting for me! I was excited! But not all of my apprehension was gone. Why had she taken so long to respond? (Or, long as I thought it was, though it had been only a short while for her). What if she had just replied that she wasn’t interested? What if she had written a snarky reply? These may sound like unfounded, pessimistic fears, but I had experienced them all at least once during my time. Expecting the worst had become a sort of second nature when dealing with these unknown faces. I finally logged in to my account sometime that evening. I was a little nervous to check my messages, as I had received not just Laurel’s reply, but a few other messages as well (you would be amazed at how many people send strange things on the internet). I recognized the other messages as being unworthy my time right away, for they were all titled with some variation of ‘hi’ which was a universal sign for ‘not trying too hard’. Then there was Laurel’s. She hadn’t changed the tag of the message, so I had no inkling as to what was inside. I prepared for the worst as I opened it.
What I found, instead, was everything I had hoped for in a response. She had answered, as best she could, every question I had sent her, even adding a couple of her own; her responses had been detailed, thoughtful, and she had added things I had not even asked about to offer more info of herself; and she had done all of her answers and questions with proper grammar! She wanted to talk! More than that, she knew HOW to talk (or write, more appropriately) and had not felt the need to hide that from me. That was exciting! My heart jumped a bit. After all, I had sent dozens of messages out with similar detail to the one I sent her, only to receive limited, one line responses to my questions, or short responses that had nothing to do with the questions asked. Having them all replied to properly, and with thought, was something I was not used to at all.
I did not at once know what to do. She had replied with a message just as long as the one I had written her; it was practically a chapter of a book on its own, without my adding anything new to it. But I knew that, if this girl was really something special, then length wouldn’t matter to her. She would reply anyways. So I began the process of answering, hoping that I could come up with new and interesting inquiries for her, without sounding like I was listing off a checklist of requirements to date me. Though, knowing her now as well as I do, I doubt she would have been so offended by that. When at last I had come up with a reasonable amount of new material to give her, I had passed into an entire second page of a Word document. Two pages and we had only just met! If she hadn’t been scared by the length of my first message, I was going to give it at least one more try. I do not even remember what time it was when I sent off that second message, only that I had worked on it for a couple hours, and that I had ignored some of the work I ought to have done… and that I did not care for either, because I had found a girl who might yet fill the great yearning in my heart. I think I spent the rest of that day smiling, though when anyone asked why, I could not give them a great answer beyond: “I found a friend”.
It was a rather faulty way to make a judgment, but when I saw the message in my inbox, my instincts were proven right - at least to some extent. And something else, too. If I was right about how he would go about contacting me, then that meant I was right about something else. He was like me. A lot like me.
I pulled up the message, and the first thing that struck me was the length. It wasn't a short "Hi" or "How are you?" it was a full-length message, with actual questions. Questions that told me he had read all the way through my profile, and was paying attention when he did. Intelligent, thoughtful questions, using the information I'd already given in my profile as a starting point.
This was the kind of message I could respond to. It was the kind of message I'd been hoping for. This one could communicate, and well, through text. He thought before he spoke, and when he did speak it wasn't mindless drivel or dead-end questions. He asked because he wanted the answers, not just because he wanted to talk to me. This message was proof of what he said in his profile - he was a writer. I'd spoken to others before who claimed that, but whose writing skills informed me that, if they did write, they weren't very serious about it. That meant he was also telling the truth. Another point in his favor.
I knew when I saw how long the message was that I was going to respond. I suppose I could even say that I knew I'd respond when I read his profile the first time. The sight of the message didn't surprise me. What did surprise me was the fact that he was three hours ahead of me, and he hadn't sent anything before I went to bed the night before. And I had stayed up later than I intended, hoping. That meant he had thought long and hard about something. I guessed it was what to say, since his message was so well-written.
I dismissed that from my mind, except for the determination to answer in a way that meant he wouldn't have wasted his time. And I wrote back, in the few hours before I had to leave for work. I've never been particularly good at asking other people questions about themselves. I've always done much better when they volunteer such information to me, and all that's required of me is to sit and listen. But I noticed right away that he seemed far more interested in asking questions about me than he was in offering the same information about himself. In that, he was also different. And that made me curious.
I read my message several times, checking for punctuation and spelling errors, and then clicked send.
I went to work that day feeling excited, and a little nervous.
Seth In all honesty, I probably should have been more excited to wake up the next day. After all, the chance that I had sent a message to my future wife is an exciting prospect. But when I woke the next day I had nothing more than the general ‘everyday’ feeling on me. I had sent dozens of messages that never got returned on various online dating sites; the odds weren’t in my favor that I had received a response. That is why I didn’t check my email that morning. I should have, surely, but I did not. It was a game, almost: how long could I hold out until I saw whether my time had been worth its spending? I lost that game more times than not, but… I also had a feeling about this one, a feeling that she was a little different from all the others I had messaged. When I at last checked my email that around noon I found… nothing. Nothing at all.
I was disappointed. I wondered if she might not have thought the message worth responding to, or maybe had not even read it all. What I did not think of, at first, was that she lived in Oregon and I in Ohio, which meant that she was three hours behind me. That was why I, if I had waited just another hour, would have had a much better start to my day than I actually did; but I had work to do, and I was off before I ever received her response, wondering why exactly it was I wasted my time on the online world.
It wasn’t until much later, when I finally got home, that I realized my mistake. I had a message waiting for me! I was excited! But not all of my apprehension was gone. Why had she taken so long to respond? (Or, long as I thought it was, though it had been only a short while for her). What if she had just replied that she wasn’t interested? What if she had written a snarky reply? These may sound like unfounded, pessimistic fears, but I had experienced them all at least once during my time. Expecting the worst had become a sort of second nature when dealing with these unknown faces. I finally logged in to my account sometime that evening. I was a little nervous to check my messages, as I had received not just Laurel’s reply, but a few other messages as well (you would be amazed at how many people send strange things on the internet). I recognized the other messages as being unworthy my time right away, for they were all titled with some variation of ‘hi’ which was a universal sign for ‘not trying too hard’. Then there was Laurel’s. She hadn’t changed the tag of the message, so I had no inkling as to what was inside. I prepared for the worst as I opened it.
What I found, instead, was everything I had hoped for in a response. She had answered, as best she could, every question I had sent her, even adding a couple of her own; her responses had been detailed, thoughtful, and she had added things I had not even asked about to offer more info of herself; and she had done all of her answers and questions with proper grammar! She wanted to talk! More than that, she knew HOW to talk (or write, more appropriately) and had not felt the need to hide that from me. That was exciting! My heart jumped a bit. After all, I had sent dozens of messages out with similar detail to the one I sent her, only to receive limited, one line responses to my questions, or short responses that had nothing to do with the questions asked. Having them all replied to properly, and with thought, was something I was not used to at all.
I did not at once know what to do. She had replied with a message just as long as the one I had written her; it was practically a chapter of a book on its own, without my adding anything new to it. But I knew that, if this girl was really something special, then length wouldn’t matter to her. She would reply anyways. So I began the process of answering, hoping that I could come up with new and interesting inquiries for her, without sounding like I was listing off a checklist of requirements to date me. Though, knowing her now as well as I do, I doubt she would have been so offended by that. When at last I had come up with a reasonable amount of new material to give her, I had passed into an entire second page of a Word document. Two pages and we had only just met! If she hadn’t been scared by the length of my first message, I was going to give it at least one more try. I do not even remember what time it was when I sent off that second message, only that I had worked on it for a couple hours, and that I had ignored some of the work I ought to have done… and that I did not care for either, because I had found a girl who might yet fill the great yearning in my heart. I think I spent the rest of that day smiling, though when anyone asked why, I could not give them a great answer beyond: “I found a friend”.
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