You Wanna Meet Where?

Originally posted 06/24/2005 7:19pm

My sense of direction sucks. If I'm in a mall and go into a store, when I exit the store, I have to stand in the entry for a few moments to orient myself so that I can remember if I should go left or right. It's gotten to the point that when I DO go shopping at the mall, I will "always go right". Always. That way, I don't have to worry about where I came from and where I'm going.

If I'm traveling some place in my car, things like North, South, East and West mean nothing to me. I need directions like "make a left at the red house, go 4 miles, make a left onto Blahblah Street, go 5 houses, make a right at the orange house and ...." PLEASE don't tell me to go East on Front Street. Mapquest's driving directions function is great for people like me-- except I really need them to take it step further and put in landmarks like "the office you seek is across the street from the Bob Evans restaurant you see as soon as you get off the exit, dummy!"

BUT... once I drive some place, it's permanently stuck in my memory. I haven't lived with my parents since the summer of 1987 and I only go "home" to visit once a year, yet I can still drive all of the backroads, highways and streets like it was just yesterday that I was living there. If you were to take me back to the college town I lived in for almost 10 years, I bet I'd probably have no problem finding my way around there, too.

A couple of years ago, I placed an ad on a small private "members only" dating website. The ads were organized by area code in a "classifieds" ad format. There was no fancy search engine and the membership base was small. You had to be really looking for the site to find it. A couple of days after my ad was up and running, I got a response from "W." He was into the outdoors, ran his own computer consulting business, was in his early 30s like me, single, no kids, owned his own home, had a dog and liked to cook, travel and read. PERFECT for me. He was a really nice guy, too. Funny and sincere. We exchanged photos and he was even cute. "He must secretly be gay," said a co-worker who knew of my past habit of falling for "great guys" who ended up also liking "great guys."

Nope. He wasn't gay. I asked him. He thought it was funny that I'd ask such a thing. I was smitten. I showed his picture to a few of my co-workers. He was standing on a snowy bank, with a pretty lake behind him. Outdoorsy. He didn't mind that I wasn't and we shared an interest in the beach, water, etc. So-- inevitably, he wanted to meet. I wanted to meet. I asked him to suggest a meeting spot.

"Why don't we meet at the Dave and Buster's on Yaddayadda Street," he suggested in an email. "We can have a meal, play some games, grab a drink or two and just have some fun." Sounded good to me. I had lived in this city about 7 years at the time and hadn't heard of the street he had mentioned. So, I looked it up on the internet. There was no street by that name, but there was a Dave and Buster's. So, I wrote him back and asked, "Do you mean the D&B off of Blanketyblank Street?"

He said no. He insisted that there was a D&B "north of Boohoo Ave, just a little east of Woohoo Blvd." (Yes, all of these streets are made up because I can't remember the actual names of the streets.) I wrote him back, "Can you be more specific? Like name some landmarks?" He did. He listed stores and shopping centers and gas stations I had never heard of. I was getting very frustrated. I wrote him and said, "Look, I'll be the first to admit that I don't know everything about Columbus, and I definitely don't know where these places are... so either you're playing with me and don't want to meet or we're living in two different cities."

I was joking about the last part and praying that the first part wasn't true. He wrote back, "Did you say Columbus? Columbus, Ohio?" I wrote back, "Yes!" He wrote back, "Oh, I don't live in Columbus. I live in Minneapolis." I wrote back, "What's your area code? Mine is XXX." He wrote back, "XXY" I logged onto the website and looked at ads and sure enough, his area code was right before mine on the listing. He had looked at ads in the wrong area code.

So, I did what any woman who thought she had found a good match would. I wrote him back and asked, "So, are you moving or am I?" I never heard from him again. Guess he was too embarrassed by his mistake. Too bad. I have no problem with long-distance relationships and probably would have relocated if things had worked out.