The Personals

Have you ever written a personal ad to be printed in a newspaper?

The bulletin board in our Spanish class has several examples of personal ads written by students as part of an exercise. Some of them are serious, and others very funny. Reading these ads reminded me of a friend who once read and answered a personal ad from her local newspaper. What a fiasco that turned out to be!

My girlfriend was single and looking for love...in all the wrong places in retrospect. I can practically hear Johnny Lee singing right now, can you? Come on, please tell me you remember the theme from Urban Cowboy! Okay, whatever! Some of us are older than others. Let's continue with the tale about my poor friend.

My girlfriend, who shall remain nameless as I wouldn't want to embarrass her or cause our friendship to suffer, hadn't been dating anyone and was really having a hard time meeting guys. She turned to the personal ads and read one that she found intriguing, so she ended up answering it, which lead to a lengthy dialogue with the guy who wrote it. Keep in mind this was before the days of email, so there were letters being sent and phone calls being made for quite some time as these two strangers got to know one another.

Now... my girlfriend had sent her photo to this guy at his request, but he never provided a photo of himself even though she'd asked for one in return. Uh... hello! Red flag alert! He had described himself as being blonde and stocky though.

Time passed and it was finally decided that these two lonely folks should meet in person. Scary thought, right? One never knows where something like this could lead! It could be love at first sight, which could then lead to a whirlwind romance, marriage and babies.... or... not.

The meeting took place in a public place, a restaurant to be exact. My girlfriend was very excited and yet very nervous about all the unknowns. And she's always been quite shy, so this was a very big deal to her.

As it turned out, the guy's hair was indeed blonde, what little he had remaining. Seems he was virtually bald. He wasn't stocky. He was quite overweight. He had an incredibly bad complexion and evidently wore some kind of geeky polyester pants that were completely out of style and just downright tacky. Let's just say there was no chemistry... not for my friend anyway.

My girlfriend was mortified! She apparently made up some lame excuse about needing to leave and got the heck out of that place. Later that night she called me and told me about the whole unfortunate experience. She shed a few tears and then we laughed about it.

A few days later, my girlfriend received a letter from the polyester prince and he basically blasted her for blowing him off, saying she was too appearance-oriented and how she'd disappointed him. My friend was so upset as she's just the nicest person ever and would never intentionally hurt a soul. He had her thinking she was a terrible person because she wasn't attracted to him. I told her he was the loser because he had been deceptive from the beginning... "Mr. I'm Blonde and Stocky and I Refuse to Give You My Photo."

Needless to say, my girlfriend NEVER answered another personal ad, and you'll be thrilled to know she's happily married and has a daughter today.