We were headed down Chagrin like Kermit and Fozzie Bear. Approaching Richmond the traffic slowed and Burnside posited:
”You know what you need, Rabbi….you need to start dating again.”
“I’m in the zone, my friend. Don’t worry about me.”
He laughed. Loudly. “What the f#% are you talking about— what zone? You haven’t gone out in months.”
“Yeah, but I’m on a roll…I could…there’s just no one out there!”
Unrelenting, the man pushed forward. “What do you mean you’re on a ROLL? Are you dreaming?”
“No, seriously, “I shot back elaborating. “…Dated three ladies this year—with varying degrees of magic. Just not (at least for me), “keepers.”
And further… “But I could go out if I wanted.”
“What’s with those online things you do?” (referring to Match.com and JDate). “You telling me there’s NO ONE worth meeting?”
So I explained. Match sends you five suggestions daily, each of which I scrutinize, but to no avail. Maybe, I suggest, I’m just not cut out for a non-Jew. My thinking is to cancel the membership this month.
“You’d be eliminating 80% of the world, Rab…you know that?
“80% of YOUR world, perhaps. Not mine.” (I thought back to my father-in-law. He could have accepted the divorce, but, even today, he’d be accusing me of just “flouncin’ around with a shiksah.”)
Dennis, however, made me think. That night, while vetoing the day’s “Matches,” I took personal inventory.
Between work, play, family…do I really want…do I really have time for a relationship? Is there any time AT ALL, to cultivate one out of town?
(A familiar refrain).
A “friend” with potential recently invited me to New York for New Year’s Eve. Not certain where it could go—might like to find out…then reality set in.
“Best case scenario, Dad,” my child asked, “What do you see happening?”
“Huh?”
“REALLY, I mean it…best case —what happens New Year’s Eve?”
“Well, best case we fall madly in love and I move to NY or we both move to Florida in a year—absolute best case scenario.”
“Dad, do you really see that happening?”
“No.”
“Then why even bother?”
I’m not.
Instead, I am doing some math. House odds on a relationship.
First I take the set of all women and eliminate 80% due to religion. Then I cross off another 60% on age. Eyeing reality, I “86” all those outside northeast Ohio, (putting back in, against child’s wishes, ladies living within the Detroit-Pittsburgh-Cincinnati triangle).
There’s more. Out come the druggers and smokers. Nischt nischt to the twice-divorced or anyone whose Facebook relationship status is “Complicated.” And I knock out anyone looking to do major travel (unless of course it’s limited to New York, Chicago or Vegas).
That doesn’t leave a whole lot…and we haven’t even gotten to looks.
But wait! Switching gears for a moment I recall my Dad’s lament…that neither he nor I “…was a Tyrone Power.” I am, to be sure, a smiling face-in-the-crowd. Charming maybe, but….
Groucho Marx refused to join any club that would have him as a member. What does this cowboy truly offer the balanced, age-appropriate Jewess? Companionship, yes. Commitment, yes. But neither money nor Europe.
And my sense of humor? Good, sure, but laughs are on DVD’s this holiday season…and come January I can’t be Tivo’d.
Fact is I know what I do and do not bring to the table. I’m personable, maybe even evolved, but a semi-neb at heart; open-minded yet old-fashioned, and at the end of the day, pretty set in my ways. So set, that indeed I may be I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.
On a roll.
“flouncin’ around with a shiksah.”
Love it!