What's My Line?

Patience is a virtue for which I was always a C- student.

The fax is too slow. I can talk faster. Should have made a phone call.
Waiting for the Keurig to make a cup of coffee is infuriating.
FedEx needs to get those planes landed just a little more efficiently. It has been 25 hours and my package is still not here from Singapore.
Indecisive people should be denied drivers licenses. The timid, too.

But just when I am ready to give up on eHarmony and all the losers who subscribe, and take the app off of my phone so I do not have to be reminded that the world is brimming with all manner of bottom feeding Neanderthals, Jack replies.

And he replies in a good way. He's funny. He is light-hearted. He has a good attitude. I get up off the bench and get in the game.

Again the ball is in my court. A court I have no experience playing on. I may as well have a bag over my head.

But eHarmony idiot-proofs the whole thing, so even a novice like myself can navigate. The fact that they idiot-proof it should tell me something. Even they anticipated a preponderance of idiots on their site.

eHarmony sends an encouraging little note pushing me to the next step. "You and Jack are on the same page! Keep the momentum going. Send him 5 open ended questions.

And again, since research shows us that people are abysmally poor judges of themselves and other people, they provide a bunch of questions that are designed to help you figure out who is a prince and who is a frog before you waste a lot of time getting all dolled up and going on a bunch of dates only to find out on the third one that he's a slacker in a dead end job, still lives with his mother (who insists on calling him "Mama's Little Boo Boo Bear") and takes cabs everywhere because his Yugo was repossessed.

So I pick my questions. The relate to family and extended family and what holidays look like so you can get a sense of how he values those relationships. They ask about habits so you can tell the overly committed sportsman from the slothful couch potato. They ask about what the person might have observed in other successful couples that contribute to their success, so you can tell if obedience and subservience are the recurring theme or if he's a traditionalist, or if he is the type that considers his partner his equal.

He's quick to respond and all of his answers are appealing. He is close to his brothers and his parents are still married and live nearby. They are healthy and involved grandparents, though Jack has no kids himself. He loves to spend weekends at the beach and on the water. He also has a motorcycle and likes to take long drives in beautiful places. He values the same kinds of things in relationships that I do, and doesn't seem high strung.

His turn to ask me questions. I wait. They arrive and I open them.

Red flag? Maybe.