It May Be Cold but I Won't Snuggle up with Just Anyone

Earlier this week I was playing phone tag with my 84-years-young neighbor lady. Let's call her "Ronnie."  She'd left a note on my door--actually, one of her travel agency business cards--asking me to call her on Monday.  I'd come home a little early as the result of our teacher in-service, but when I called I had to leave a message.  I went back out to go to the gym and do laundry at my parents' and as a result didn't get home until late.  She left a message saying she wanted to ask me something.  A favor, I thought.

Late yesterday afternoon as I was starting to pull together things to bake my zucchini-pineapple muffins, Ronnie called.

She wanted to set me up with a guy.

If you need to refresh your memory so you understand why my inner alarm went off, go read here (Item #2--and yes I thought she'd told me she was in her seventies) and come back.

O.K., so now you know where this is headed.

This time it was the former maintenance guy from our apartment community (he now works for another community in the area).  I guess she keeps in touch with all these people, maybe habitually as part of her running her own business.

"He did our maintenance, oh, I guess it was 20 years ago," Ronnie says.

Wait a minute--20 years!?  Let's do the math here.

"Uh, how old is this guy?" I ask her.

"I think 45," she says.

So of course I tell her my actual age and that I'd like to look into guys closer to my age.  She says she understands that--and yet, she goes on about meeting people and talking up this guy.  Which includes revealing that "he's not happy with his current girlfriend.  She's no good for him."  Excuse me?

I have to think of a way to derail this for good.  Even when I try to ask what he's interested in and we find there are few things we have in common (surprise) she shrugs it off.  I've had enough.

"So tell me, Ronnie--does he go to church?" I ask.

"Well, he used to go [to a Catholic church], but then he was going to his girlfriend's [non-denominational] church"--oh jeez, like they're interchangeable--"but even though he'd divorced he was still going."

"Divorced? Ronnie, if he's divorced but he didn't get an annulment, then I wouldn't feel comfortable going out with him anyway."  I was so done with the conversation by that point.  I try to be gracious and tell her thanks for thinking of me but please just tell the guy (because naturally she's already mentioned me to him) I've got a lot going on--which I do, with work and three trivia events in the next two weeks, and so on--and I think I'm going to go back to online dating anyway.

At which point she tells me that she--who does not even know how to use a computer--has been having a friend help her with a senior dating profile and she's talked to three nice men already.



Maybe I should just move into a cave and come out when I'm 70 in hopes my luck will better then.