The personal ad I answered 10 years ago has found me

I registered on MySpace a couple months ago but really haven’t done much with it, and I only have about a dozen friends through it. So, I was intrigued when I received an e-mail the other day with the subject “TexasMan wants to be friends on MySpace!” His message said, “I am glad to see you are doing well. I barely got to know you approximately 10 years ago. Of course, that is past. How are you?” I clicked on his profile, but neither his name nor his photo rang a bell at all, so I wrote him back and asked if I knew him from Texas, since that’s where I was living ten years ago, and how the heck did we know each other, anyway?

TexasMan wrote back and gently reminded me we’d met through the personal ads. Yes, the personals! I had completely forgotten (or psychologically blocked out) that I’d ever answered a personal ad, but as soon as I read his e-mail, it all came flooding back. I’d seen his ad for a week or two in one of the Austin papers. I don’t remember what it said, but there was something about it that I liked, so I finally responded. We ended up meeting for dinner one evening, and a couple weeks later he took me to dinner and a movie. I can’t remember a thing we talked about, but I do distinctly remember sitting in the movie and thinking, “I hope he doesn’t touch me, I hope he doesn’t touch me, I hope he doesn’t touch me.” Isn’t that terrible? It wasn’t that he was creepy or annoying or anything, but for some reason I just really, really, really didn’t want him to hold my hand or kiss me or anything. In my defense, only a day or two before we went on our second (and last) date, I had just found out my mom’s cancer was terminal, so I’m sure I wasn’t in my right mind. I ended up blurting it out to him after the movie, and he was very understanding and hugged me. We exchanged a few e-mails after that, but within a month or two I’d moved back to New Jersey and we lost touch.

I’m truly shocked he even remembered my name, because I didn’t remember his at all! So we’ve been catching up through MySpace. He’s now 46, still single and living in his hometown in Oklahoma. He wrote me this long explanation about how he had a business venture go sour on him, leaving him with no business to speak of and thousands of dollars in credit card debt. He moved back to his hometown so he could live rent-free in a family-owned home and work his way out of debt. I guess it’s working because he now only has a couple thousand dollars left to pay off. But he owns some land in Texas that he’s sure will be worth a couple millions dollars (!) in a few years, so when the time is right, he’s going to sell, move to Hawaii while he’s still young enough to enjoy it, as he put it, “and never come back.”

So, he’s either completely crazy or a soon-to-be millionaire. Guess I should keep in touch with him in case it's the latter. ;) Such a strange blast from the past!

In other exciting news, there were 104 viewings of my blog on September 1st – first time I’ve ever had readership in the triple digits! I had over 100 on September 2nd, too, and people have even been clicking on the ads. Thank you all so much for following my crazy dating adventures!