Dating websites send email notifications daily. They reel you in, indicating,  “Someone is interested in you.” 

“He likes you,” they write. “Do you like him?”

They offer you a photo. Sometimes, those pics are pretty bad. I often wonder what these men think when they post their images. I’ve received pictures of men who have taken a shot in a bathroom using the mirror. It’s a photo of a man holding up a phone, taking an image of his reflection. Don’t these guys have friends who will take their picture? Take a selfie! Actually, a few do take a selfie. However, they often take it sitting in a vehicle—maybe even while driving– at such an angle you can see up their nostrils and count every nose hair. Why? 

Furthermore, why does the site just send a photo? Who knows if you “like” someone by looking at one picture? The images arrive without the person’s profile. The person could live 500 miles away. He may be married. He might smoke. These are  no-go things in my book. But, to find out about him, you must swipe left for yes or right to say no. 

Occasionally, there isn’t even a photo, which was the case with Sven the SEAL. No photo is not fair. If I show you mine, you must show me yours. (I wrote about this in a previous blog.)  One of these “no-show” messages arrived in my mailbox following the Reed debacle. I responded to the unknown, no-photo suitor with the following message.

“Do you answer phone calls that don’t include a caller I.D.? I’ll be you don’t.  Well, neither do I.”

I was in a mood, I suppose. Before I had a chance to delete the guy from my list of potential suitors,  a message from him appeared in the mailbox.

“Well then, you may never read this. I won’t put a pic here. There are other ways to send one. I will tell you I am blunt. I am also Alpha, Scorpio, and a retired Navy SEAL.”

Tell me that wasn’t weird. But, of course, idiot that I am, it made me curious. I immediately had visions of David Boreanaz from the C.B.S. series, “Seal Team.” I watched that show when it first came on television, and from what I remember of those guys, they were pretty buff. Khaki never looked so good. Could a 70-year old still be a hunk? Yours truly had to find out.

I thought about Reed and all of his lies, so I took it upon myself to check this guy out. I looked online to see if there was a way to determine whether someone who claimed to be a Navy SEAL. was authentic. Sure enough, I found it. “How to check if someone was a Navy SEAL.” Thank goodness for Google.

A gentleman named Don Shipley has a website claiming he can confirm whether or not a person had served as a Navy SEAL. The fee for this information was minimal and very well worth the investment under these circumstances. Don Shipley used to run a YouTube channel called “Phony Navy SEAL Of The Week .”Apparently, he’d call up guys claiming they’d been a Navy SEAL, and he’d confront them about their claim. In 2019, YouTube terminated the site “due to multiple or severe violations of YouTube policy .” Apparently, YouTube prohibits content designed to harass, bully or threaten people. After reading about the YouTube shut down, I knew Don Shipley was my kind of guy. He was definitely the person I needed.

But first, I had to get my latest no-photo, dating-website SEAL to give me some personal information, including his full name. It was time to give Mr. Blunt-Alpha-Scorpio my phone number in order to get it.

© 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.