After a brief hiatus from intervention in my dating life, my mom has once again taken it upon herself to be my personal dating service. Now, it’s not so much that I don’t trust my mom’s taste. I am willing to humor her. But there’s the small problem of the fact that she — and hence, any guy she could meet to set me up with — lives in Eugene, Oregon. No big deal – only a 13 hour drive. Never mind that SF is a girl who thinks that, living in West Hollywood, a guy who lives in Pasadena or Hermosa Beach is geographically undesirable!
Here is the email exchange that I had with my mom today (She is a professor):
Dear SF, Tonight I have class with the student who Dad and I would like to introduce to you. I am attaching his photo, but he is much cuter than this. Do you even want me to find out if he has a girl friend and if he smokes. If you do, I can tell him that I want to introduce him to someone when he is done with the program. I won’t tell him who you are, but I will tell him some things about you if they don’t give away who you are. If you don’t want me to do this, just let me know. I promise to give up after this and never bug you about someone I meet….ugh, that is a BIG promise to make.
I responded:
I don’t mind you trying to set me up and I will be openminded, but I have to warn you that the chances of me actually dating someone who doesn’t live in L.A. are very very slim! I don’t even want to date someone who lives too far away IN L.A. …much less a real long distance relationship. That said, you can ask him whatever you like and/or tell him about me if you want, I don’t mind.
She responded:
Actually, because I’m his advisor, I don’t plan to let him know who I want to set him up with. I’ll tell him that I’ll give him your name and email information in February (because of a conflict of interest). If you don’t have a boy friend by then, I’ll give him the info. Also, that makes it more comfortable in case one of you doesn’t want to meet the other one. I want it to be comfortable for everyone. In the meantime, if he wonders something about this mystery woman, I’ll tell him that I’ll have to check the answer with “her.” Kind of like Match.com, but far more weird. By the time I tell him about you, I’ll have to let him know that Eugene is a deal-breaker. I know he loves to travel, and I think he is even considering teaching overseas. He is doing his student teaching in a math classroom. I’ll talk to him tonight as though I haven’t spoken to the “mystery woman” so that he can decline if he wants to….and like I said, I’ll check on the smoking issue I guess he needs to like cats, too…….
By the end of this I was cracking up and forwarding to all my girlfriends so they could get a laugh, too. But when I talked to Mom tonight, she meant business! She rattled off all his wonderful attributes — apparently he is extremely kind, smart, funny but sort of introverted, and did she mention he was even cuter than his picture? (Note: in the picture he is cute, but reminds me eerily of my ex-fiance’s younger brother.)
My mom then told me that she had hatched a plan for me to meet this guy in a casual way, but it would involve me coming to Eugene on December 18th instead of the 22nd or 23rd as I usually do. I managed to talk her out of this, but she seemed disappointed until we hatched a plan. I am flying up there in a few weeks for my 10 year high school reunion (which is a matter for another post, dear readers) and so she is going to enlist the social butterfly of her class of grad students to plan a Friday happy hour that she and I can tag along to. And I agreed to this — aren’t I so openminded?
The funny thing is, even though she does tend to meddle, she really isn’t usually this serious about things. I think she genuinely believes that this guy may be the love of my life and that she would be doing both of us a disservice if she didn’t introduce us to each other.
So, what the hell. Mom, this one’s for you…
….and if nothing else, it will make for some good blogging.
Filed under: dating, family, love, men, parents, relationships, single
Hahahahahaha. She has obviously given this a lot of thought….exactly what to tell him about you and exactly when.
That’s hilarious.
Haha your mom is great.
Your mom sounds great. I wish I had a mom setting me up with people.
Wait a second: My mom sends me tidbits about wonderful women all the time. Unfortunately, she lives in England. Which means the women in question all live in England, too, which means they’re 6,000 miles away and have bad teeth.
But isn’t it nice to ponder a post-Match environment? I’ve got a coffee date with a certain someone on Monday afternoon. Even if it goes nowhere, I’ll be happy to have gotten a break from it all.
cmajor7 – Hey, watch it! My parents are British and none of us have bad teeth! I think what you meant to say was: “…which means they’re 6,000 miles away and have class and cute accents.”
Heh – my Mom tried to match me up once. It, uh, didn’t work out so well. And, thankfully, she never tried again…
Oh, God. My mom is ALWAYS trying to set me up. The last guy sent me his web site, which said he was “single and ready to mingle” then had a photo gallery of all the creatures he had shot and killed. He lived across the country from me.
Another guy mom gave my e-mail address to was really creepy and wouldn’t tell me who gave him my contact info. He said he was divorced, had four kids, lived in Israel and was looking for a wife. I told him I wasn’t an e-mail-order-bride.