I try very hard not to get discouraged with online dating. You never know when a smiley face might end up being the real thing.  But I have standards. If someone is seriously seeking a partner, they’d include of photo with their profile. I get angry when someone contacts me and I don’t know how he looks. Would they contact me if my photo was missing? No. That’s an automatic delete. 

 I also like big, tall men. When Reed sent a smiley face and his bio included a photo of a 62-year-old,  6’3” man in a tee shirt and jeans, I was interested.  The bio also said he was a lawyer. He had a pleasant expression. But, he lived in Colorado.

 Reed’s background was interesting. His undergraduate degree was in electrical engineering. That helped him to become a pilot in the Navy. After that, he flew  commercially until he went to law school. 

 We wrote to each other, but I didn’t expect much. He was too far away. After a while, I gave him my phone number. Initially, he sent text messages. Then, he called.

I was visiting with my friend, Ivanka, when he first called me. He said he was in Alaska—that he’d flown there with a pilot friend to do some fishing. I was surprised. Not many people were travelling. He said he was at the airport waiting for his return flight home. His friend had already left.

 Ivanka was curious.  She was from Russia and trusted no one.

 “Who is this Reed?” she asked in her thick accent, concerned. The “r “ in Reed rolled on her tongue.  I opened the dating app and showed her. 

 “These big men…these big men have big parts,” she warned me. “Why do you want such a big man? You could get hurt.”  

“I’ll take my chances, Ivanka,” I told her, laughing. “He’s pretty far away. You needn’t worry.”

Reed began calling more often, but never after 3 p.m. local time. Colorado is in MST –  two hours earlier than EST. I assumed he called me during his lunch break. After learning his last name,  I checked him out on Truthfinder. Nothing criminal showed up. 

Then, the unthinkable happened.

 “I want to fly out to CT for your birthday,” he said.  I’d told him my daughter was making me a party Labor Day weekend.  “Give me the name of some places to stay in your town.”  Colorado didn’t have a high rate of COVID infections. He could still visit Connecticut. I was curious. But when I told my daughter about it, she got angry. 

“There’s a pandemic, Mom,” she argued. “You don’t know him nor where he’s been and none of our friends will attend if a stranger is here—even if he wears a mask.”  She was right. I’d tell him to postpone his visit.

“What?” he exploded when I told him. “Are you going to let your daughter dictate our relationship?  Our relationship?  “What right does she have telling us what to do?”

 I couldn’t believe I was in an argument with a man I’d never met. But argue we did. There are rules. And #1 is:  Never say anything negative about  my daughter. Reed had crossed the line,  and the gloves came off.

© Miriam Greenberg, and the blog Love In The Time Of Corona, beginning April 2022 to the Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Miriam Greenberg and Love In The Time Of Corona with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.