Feeling Fourteen

There is one thing in the world guaranteed to make me feel fourteen years old again faster than anything else:

Boys.

On April 1 of this year, someone played an April Fool's joke on . . . well, me, among other people. Without going into great detail, I was livid at the time, but I should thank him in the long run. It forced me to a point where I had to stop and evaluate how I'm spending my time, and I realized that my life was never going to end up as I wanted it if I didn't reprioritize.

I joined eHarmony.

Work with me now, I know this is a jump. After crash-landing back in Tucson again, I searched long and hard for singles groups and discovered that if you're not Christian, Jewish, or over 45, there really aren't any. Computer personals and "speed dating" seem to have replaced them, and if you don't like that, well, there's always bars. I'm at a point in my life where people who want to meet their mates go back to church to find someone nice, not a bar. Catch is, I've been trying to meet a nice pagan boy.

I've looked at a couple of the internet matching services in the past, and never quite jumped on board. Hell, mostly I filled out the little biographies and personality tests because I was bored. Call it cheap entertainment. So about a year before this, I'd done the eHarmony one. And while I wasn't quite ready to pay the price tag associated with using their service, I did read the personality profile they created of me. It was . . . pretty scary-accurate. So when I decided to give this thing a try, eHarmony is where I went.

I've exchanged small communications with a few people, and found a couple scary ones. I also found Pete. A nice pagan boy. We keep finding all these odd little things we have in common. It's a strange experience, but not entirely unfamiliar, to be instantly comfortable around someone. We can talk on the phone for hours, and we've discovered we can talk in person for hours, too.

And he's as into that as I am. I've gone on first "dates" where the guy wanted to go out to a movie, and I just didn't get it. What do I learn about you if we're both watching a movie? When I asked Pete what time he wanted to meet last weekend, he basically said, "Well, we managed to kill two hours pretty well last time. Why don't we try for three?" So we had lunch and wandered around the mall and played mini-golf and just . . . talked.

I met my sister, later, for dress-shopping. She told me I had this silly little smile on my face.

My parents have begun asking questions about him. I mentioned this to Pete, and he said yeah, he'd been getting some of those kinds of questions, too. It was kind of neat to realize that maybe he talks about me, the same way I talk about him.

I feel pretty fourteen again. But in a really good way.