Love in the year 2008
By Tara Hankinson
Writer
I met him during my sophomore year, and by “met” I mean, became Facebook friends with him because he was one of my brother’s best friends in college. After our initial technological handshake, he fell into the abyss of my 600-something “friends” until I unexpectedly met him in real life at my brother’s birthday party. He was tall, dark and handsome, my polar opposite, and everything I wasn’t looking for.
It was a middle-school crush at first sight, complicated by my childlike timidity and the presence of the great adult social enabler—alcohol. We talked that night and I thought we clicked, but the party ended without a swapping of phone numbers. Still, his presence stuck with me like a bad self-tanner that I couldn’t exfoliate away.
I’ve read “He’s Just Not That Into You,” and I firmly believe its theory of letting the guy play offense and the girl play defense. But we are in college, not the real dating world, and sometimes a little wink, in this case a virtual one, is needed to start things. So, after two glasses of wine and an hour of combing through meaningless status updates, I pressed the mystical “poke” button.
Twenty-four hours later I was poked back and received a playful post on my Facebook wall. Our flirting moved as quickly as a Ludacris rap (“from the bed to the floor”), except it went from wall posting to e-mail to a hand penned letter.
He did not disappoint me, although I had requested cursive, and instead received an endearingly blocky printed two-page autobiography.
My rambling response to my new pen pal was barely legible; my handwriting was as squiggly as a seismograph’s trail. But instead of my weird earth-quaking spikes of text scaring him away, it prompted him to search Facebook for my phone number and send me a text message when he took a weekend trip to my area.
Our second date was the quintessential modern love. It ended with a text message: “do you wanna date me?” I sent my falsely nonchalant, two-letter response—“OK”—at a stop sign, so I wouldn’t break my cardinal rule of text messaging while driving.
We agreed to keep writing letters, until I couldn’t tolerate the three-day postal lag and sent him an e-mail. His slow reply planted a seed of doubt, and I began to think this staunchly conservative, hyper-athletic guy might not want to pursue a long-distance relationship with his best friend’s quasi-hippie, artistic, vegetarian sister. (When we met he was wearing a “Big Mac” McCain T-shirt and gym shorts; my dress code is usually skintight Cheap Monday jeans and a wooden peace sign pendant.)
Our untitled “thing” slowly digressed from texts to e-mails and finally the sadly casual Facebook message. The possible “we” fizzled into nothing more than painful blip on my summer radar screen.
In our technologically lubricated dating world, the ease of communication can effortlessly (nearly) fuel a budding relationship with T9 texts. If poking replaces pick-up lines, I surely hope Skype doesn’t replace dinner dates.
Without the struggle of surviving those awkward first dates and the time commitment of in-person dating, a break-up can seem surreal.
Our relationship ended officially as simply as it had begun: with the press of a button and “unfriending” on Facebook.
