Wednesday 7 December 2011

Desperately seeking Mr Spellcheck

'Allow me to introdunce myself'.'  Oh dear, did I just make myself look stupid? That eloquent introduction came from a profile I spotted on an internet dating site.  You see, I had decided to try online dating and I was spending some time on the site, getting a feel for the kinds of people who were on there.  It didn’t take me long to realise that the search for a perfect partner isn’t about common interests, physical attraction or even compatibility.  Oh no.  When it comes to looking for love online, it’s all about the typos. 

It seemed there was no limit to the ways in which language could be mangled, and meaning misrepresented.  Now, I’m as open-minded as the next girl, but I draw the line at ‘pubic displays of affection.’  And who on earth would want to meet somebody ‘well-manured’?  Don Burke, perhaps?  Judging by the number of people who enjoy ‘winning and dinning’, there’s nothing better than jubilantly banging saucepan lids together.   Or perhaps you’re more of a ‘homobody’, in which case you’re possibly on the wrong site.  

Considering that the internet dating profile is your opportunity to present yourself at your absolute best, it was staggering how many seemed to be thrown together without even a quick check-over.  And then there were the letters...
The first man who contacted me wrote this:  ‘Good mourning!’  I thought:  Good grief!  Another told me I was ‘whitty.’  I know I’m short but he didn’t have to rub it in.  And on it went.  One chap was 'hardwokking’ - I pictured him relentlessly stir-frying - while the next led a ‘petty busy life’, which I took to mean he ran around all day doing bugger all.  Yet another wrote that he was ‘gaol oriented’, which is not something I’d be bragging about, although he seemed a step up from the guy who was looking for his ‘parter in crime’, which obviously meant he just wanted someone to drive the getaway car.  But the one email that sticks in my mind and still makes me shudder, was from a man who wrote, ‘I like cooking cars girls and motorbikes.’ I imagine he's currently 'assisting police with their enquiries'.

In time I became despondent.  Was I, like so many others on the site, ‘searching in vein’?  Looking for blood in all the wrong places?  Then suddenly it hit me:  I am ‘self-deficient’ - I don’t need a man to ‘compleat me’ and fold me tight.  And that’s when he found me.   Mr Write:  ‘I am 33 old Polish men looking for a good woman.’  Hurray!  One for each night of the month and a couple left over to take out the garbage.  






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