No seriously, I am. I can't judge time or distance to save my life. I can never tell if someone's wearing a hairpiece (not exactly estimating, but I feel this is somehow related). I have no idea how fast a car moves vs. an airplane. I hate rounding numbers and "ball parking it". In elementary school we had a math lesson on "guesstimation" and I remember on the test there were questions like "5+3= a)0 b)5 c)10". I think I wrote in "8" and did not pass. When my parents tried to figure out what I wasn't understanding in this unit, they realized I wasn't missing anything. I could do math and wanted to do math. If other kids couldn't do it and needed to use a calculator, I didn't mind. I did not, however, want to have to "lie" on a test. Just tell me the truth! I'm intelligent, I'll get it. Anyway, I'm also unable to determine if it's better to be 6' tall and 200lbs or 5'5" and 180lbs. I probably couldn't even tell you which one was which in a picture. These are my shortcomings; I have learned to accept them.
(No, Jack, I actually CAN handle the truth.)
Why I'm suddenly telling you all of this though is because tonight, my estimation ability has been put to the test. You see, I've joined an online dating site-- Jdate, to be exact. I'm tired of meeting friends-of-friends that I'm not crazy about but am then obligated to go on a few dates with. I'm tired of giving out my number to strangers at bars. I'm tired of people asking to set me up with so-and-so. Many people, some of my good friends even, are on this and other similar sites and have had mostly positive results so I figured what the hell. It's a new year, I'll give it a whirl.
Well, OK. That's not exactly what I thought. What I thought mostly was "Jesus Christ. Do I actually want to do this?" and then got all judgy on myself, my friends, my mother for saying "go for it", and anyone else who actually joins these things. So, around 9PM on Sunday evening I set up a profile. I didn't joooooin, but I made the obligatory "about me" section so I could check out who was on there and see if I'd be interested in anyone. By Monday morning I had 60 messages. By mid-morning, I had 80+. At that point, Jdate stopped sending me a picture and brief bio of whomever the admirer was and just started harassing me to pay to join their site so I could read my emails. By 7PM tonight I had over 170 messages waiting and finally bit the bullet.
Anyway, again, I was telling you about how poorly I estimate simple things because I forgot how short Jews are. (And I can call them "Jews" and be mildly insulting because they're my people, like when black people use the N-word. If you are not a Jew, don't join in on my mocking here.) I know that people tend to embellish online, so I assume if a guy say's he 5'10" he's probably closer to 5'8" or 5'9" if he's lucky. The problem is that I have an exboyfriend who was 5'10" and I always thought he was more like 5'7" (he thought I was crazy for thinking that, and possibly rightly so). I'm trying to use him as my standard of measurement but I don't even know what that means. When a seriously good-looking and successful man says he's 5'6" does that translate into 5'3"? Can I not email him back? For my sake I'm hoping it means he's actually 5'6" because if he's that short and going to lie about it, he might as well tell everyone he's 5'11", right? I mean he's ultimately planning to meet someone in person, isn't he?
This all just really sucks for me though because I like tall men. I want a man who looks like a MAN, so sue me. And I'm aware that I'm fairly small so how could I possibly be that picky? At 5'3" in 3in. heels I'm only 5'6", who am I to say that 5'8" is too short? Well I'm me goddammit and sometimes I wear 5in. heels and sometimes I wanna feel like someone can pick me up and toss me around. If you're 5'8", I don't know if you're capable of that. If you're 5'6", I'm almost positive you're not. The thing is though, we're wading in a fairly shallow gene pool here. There were maybe a handful of men in my 170 emails who were over 6' tall and no kidding, each one of them had a heading boasting about their height-- "YesThisIsMyRealHeightMD!!" and "TallJewishLawyer". Guess what Jdaters? Better brag about that here because in the real world, 6' ain't no thang.
Sidenote: I've come to see that stereotypes exist for a reason. I think maybe a handful of the guys sending messages out were not lawyers or doctors. Alright already, Jews! Relax. We've cornered the market. Now let's all explore some other careers. I hear Architect and Professor are lovely this time of year...
But as much as I dislike the truth of the stereotype, I've realized that I dislike when it's NOT true even more. First, let me tell you that of the 170, I narrowed down my responses significantly. I did this through a fool-proof method of seeing how old the correspondent was (I'd ideally like someone 27-32, but would go out of my age-range one year younger and older if he's very hot and has a great sense of humor. Yes, I'm picky.), checking out some of his pictures to see if I'd be physically attracted, looking at his education/what he does for a living, seeing if I'm what he'd be looking for (I don't wanna pull any fast ones on people who are looking for orthodox ladies, I'm only a halfsie afterall), and then finally reading what he had to say in his profile. I figure this isn't a terrible way (but probably also not a great way) to meet guys because out of 170 emails, I responded to 20. Of those 20, let's guess that 10 will write back. Of those 10, I meet up with five. Of those five, maybe two of them make me not want to kill myself at drinks and of those two maybe I actually like one. And that's probably worst-case scenario. So if I can find one person I like without initially putting on pants and leaving my bed (yes, I sat here in my underwear all night like some kind of internet-dating weirdo but in my defense my apartment's unbearably hot), it's not the worst $40 I've spent.
In my search however, here are some gems I've come across:
-First, there was another halfsie. A doctor, 6' tall, "a perfect match!" I thought. No, wrong. His profile said he had neither the time nor energy to date so he wanted a girl with a healthy appetite for fun. I think we can all agree that this roughly translates into a healthy appetite for sex. Sir MD, it's called Jdate, not Jfuck.
-Next, there were six people who sent messages asking if it'd be ok to message me. Anyone else seeing the irony here?
-Finally, I started quickly and severely judging everyone on the most trivial things. Turns out my knee-jerk reaction to "Profession: actor" is "poor"; You like fishing? NEXT!; You're under 5'10? NEXT!; Your main picture is you with your shirt off? NEXT!; You're wearing a douchebag hat in your pic? NEXT; You live in Brooklyn? dear Gooooooood NEXT!; You're picture is professionally done? Oy vey. NEXT; You're Indian! NEXT! (Dude, that's obviously not why I'm here); Your eyebrows are too big. NEXT; You took a picture of yourself in the mirror at the gym. Definitely NEXT!; You're wearing pink shorts in your picture; Your hair is longer than mine; You didn't graduate college; You have the same name as my dad; You have the same name as my brother; Your picture is of you with another woman; You have an ugly dog; Your dog is kissing you on the mouth in your picture...I could go on.
Of these 170 men, about 165 of them said they liked my smile. I'll have to let my parents know that the money they spent on my braces was money well spent. Hell, if it lands me a 6'0 Jewish doctor it might be the best money they ever spent.
I think it was around $3,000.
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