There is a point in time when children grow up and believe they know more than their parents. They also believe that their healthy, independent parent needs their assistance. So, it was funny to me when my grown daughter felt she should get involved with my online dating experience. Back in February, Elizabeth had a pipe burst in her townhouse condominium and the entire downstairs had to be gutted. She moved into my house to live until the repairs are completed.

I do a lot of work at my dining room table. However, I’m easily distracted in that location, as many things are happening around me, and I often leave my laptop open, knowing I’ll get back to whatever I was doing. Recently, while watching the evening news, Elizabeth heard the “ding’ of an incoming message, and curiosity got the best of her.

“Hey, Mom,” she called, “You have a message from a man called ‘CasuallyHandsome.’

“Is that so?” I answered from the kitchen laughing. “Who said you could read my love letters?”

“I haven’t read it,” she squeaked back defensively. “I’d have to click on the link to do that. Can I?” she asked mischievously.

“CasuallyHandsome, huh?” I imagined a tall, salt-and-pepper combed-back hair, golfer kind of guy wearing a pale blue polo shirt with a pastel pink, baby blue and white argyle-print sweater thrown over his shoulders, sleeves tied loosely across his chest, leaning against a white, Georgia-plantation-style porch pillar, arms crossed and a serene smile – almost smug. One would think that someone brave enough or arrogant enough to give himself that screen name was quite successful in life.

That line of thinking, however, is my downfall. My blog started during the pandemic when we were all isolated. What began as a fun thing to do–meet someone online, write to them, receive a response, then write about the experience–morphed into something else when the lockdown ended. I started to hope that someone–a best friend–would surface and want to go places with me, have dinner, watch movies, and discuss books and politics with me. (Well, maybe not politics). But the more I allowed that fantasy into my imagination, the more disappointed I became.

“Sure, honey, go ahead and see who the man is behind Door #1,” I joked. I walked to where she was seated in the dining room and peeked over her shoulder.

“Whoa,” exclaimed Elizabeth, giggling, as CasuallyHandsome came into view. “Oh my God, he looks like Shaggy from Scooby Doo.” That he did. It was not a flattering photo. More like terrible, and my daughter laughed and laughed. She made me laugh, too. So much for the argyle sweater thrown over the shoulders.

There he was–all 46-years old–in a red crumpled tee shirt. He wore a blue-and-white Titleist cap (the only golf-y thing about him) with the brand name in red letters stitched across the front. The hat sat askew on his head, slightly twisted to the left, and his crooked, one-sided grin, somewhat paralleled the brim. A glare reflected in each lens of his large-frame tortoise-shell glasses that sat on the bridge of his somewhat pronounced nose. Shaggy-brown hair flowed out from under the cap, down the sides of his face in disarray, blending into a gray-tipped beard that covered his chin. Looking at this picture, I could imagine my grandmother saying, in her Yiddish accent, Oy–a beauty and a doll!

“He’s probably looking for someone to support him,” exclaimed my daughter, reading off the list of his other attributes, which included a high-school education, a few kids, and a divorce.

I walked back to the kitchen to continue making dinner. Somehow, with my daughter involved, this latest message wasn’t as disappointing. I just had to move on to the next. Elizabeth wanted to respond to him, and I told her to do or say whatever she wanted. Later, as we ate supper, I asked her what she’d written.

“All he sent to you was a heart emoji. So, I just wrote, ‘I don’t think so.’ But you got another email just as I finished. It was from someone who calls himself ‘Forever Yours.’ Let’s tackle this one next.

And that one was a real doozy.