Sonja's Sojourns - 
An Irreverent Look at Internet Dating 

By Sonja Katz

I used to sew a lot of my own clothes. Cooked and entertained a lot, and worked out at a gym several times a week. I don't do any of those things anymore, even though I loved all of them. I just don't have the time!

And, what took the place of all this activity? Oh, I think I've got an idea.

Why make my own clothes, when I can just order them online? Vacations? So expensive. And, why worry about my own physical safety, when I can sit back, secure in my office chair in front of the computer, clicking through great pictures of mountains I'd never dare to climb, while tossing trail mix onto my waiting taste buds?

These days, dating even seems like a struggle if I have to leave the house. My biological clock's battery went completely dead, ticking away for years while I was too busy to think about it. They've got virtual goldfish online, why not babies? (I guess I should admit here that my goldfish died from neglect after a couple of weeks, when I started instant messaging with a new online beau.)

"It's been six months -- why haven't you call me back?" the vaguely familiar voice drones on my answering machine. Call her? How freakin' archaic can she get, I'm thinking. If she only had a computer, she'd have heard back from me almost immediately. Oh, wait. Maybe that was my mother.

It's true; for the most part, I don't even want to deal with telephone calls anymore. I've got to listen to the message, which oftentimes, my machine garbles. Usually, because I have a business and get lots of calls, … or maybe just because I'm anal retentive (but that's another column altogether,) I have to write it down, and then remember to call back when it's not 3:30 in the morning, or during their work day, or when they'd be eating dinner or watching the evening news.

I recently went on vacation to Washington, and stopped at a store outside of the Olympic Forest. There was an attractive man behind the counter, and I started chatting with him, ostensibly to continue my business with his establishment via the Internet after I got home. I hadn't gotten to the exact nature of the kind of business yet, when I was stopped cold by his reply to my request for his URL.

"Oh, I don't have a Web site. Computers just passed me by," said this silver-haired hunk. "I let my son handle anything that requires computing."

The man was single, and interested, but down for the count. "Did he let his son handle his Internet dating, too?" I wondered.  When he suggested that I sign the store's guest book and that he would like to call me, I almost groaned out loud, "Too much work!"

Lord help the man who doesn't email.

And, for those who do, they'd be well-advised to know the extent of my complete slothfulness. Once in awhile, I'll get an email from someone responding to my personals ad who will say only something like, "Tell me about yourself."

I am so tempted to spend hours, writing back to him all about clipping my dog's nails, my opinions about the preparation of dishwater, how nasal a particular editor's voice sounds in person, the disgusting schmutz I found on the countertop beneath my microwave the other day, and other revealing details of my life.

But, unfortunately, there's just no time for that. I'm too busy searching online for sewing patterns I'll never use.

Instead, I like to reciprocate by playing the equalivent of one of my favorite childhood games, called "It."

"You first," I type and hit the send button, knowing full well that I am taking the chance of never hearing from that person again, someone who just might have become the love of my life, had I taken the time …

You can write to Sonja at sonjakatz@sexyads.net if you're a SexyAds.net member!