Plenty of Fish in The Sea…

Okay, I was planning on holding off on another online dating post, but I felt that this one couldn’t wait.

I understand the saying that “there are plenty of fish in the sea.”  I can appreciate that the person saying it is likely suggesting that there are many relationship options for people. However, I don’t know if these people are thinking about how many of those “fish” are actually worth catching.  Going back to my first blog entry on “nice guys,” I’d like to point out that a great many fish out there are ones that aren’t even worth throwing back for someone else to catch. I’d suggest just clubbing them over the head and using them as chum for sharks.

Think about all of the times that you have gone to a club or a bar or some other social gathering. Now consider all of the single men or women that were at the event with you.  Of those, how many of them do you think were actually worth starting a conversation with, let alone potentially dating?  I’d say that it’s a fairly safe bet that I have never actually met someone in a bar for the first time and thought, “Wow. I have got to get me some of that.”

I suppose that what I’m trying to get at is that there are certainly plenty of fish out there, but the selection of fish that are desirable are still few and far between. I feel like the POF website is mainly fugu, blood clams, silver-striped blaasop, and stonefish.  Where are the intelligent Oscars, the beautiful octopi, the captivating firefly squid? Clearly on a different website.

I’ve made profiles on a number of free online dating sites. I figured the folks on OKC had the most potential for actually resulting in meeting people that are at least compatible with me. However, I also heard of this site called Plenty of Fish.  Apparently it’s like the slutty counterpart to OKC where most people are on it for quick hookups rather than real relationships.  I couldn’t resist.

I discovered quite quickly that the rumors were very, very accurate. I received more messages that had little in the way of substance and lots in the way of terrible innuendo. I generally found the messages amusing, but ignored almost all of them. I had actually forgotten that I even had a POF account for a while because I sent the emails to my spam folder. However, at some point the emails started getting through again. Planning on deactivating my account for good, I went ahead and checked the message I had received a notification about.

I’m really, really, really hoping that either one of his friends got on his account or that he was black out drunk.  That’s really the only reason I could imagine why someone would send a message like this. Not that it’s acceptable in either case, but at least it’s an explanation.

I ended up clicking on his photo or something instead of deleting the message because I was redirected to his profile.  This is what I found:

There are so many issues here…

First of all, he says that he’s “Searching for quality.”  I call BS.  If you are searching for quality, you don’t send messages like that to people. Next, I was peeved when I realized that he was a fellow grad student.  He gives all of us grad students a bad name.

On to the “about me” section of his profile…

Not only is he a grad student, but he’s at the same university as me? Apparently the biochemistry department has absolutely zero standards when it comes to admitting decent human beings. Let’s hope he’s smart enough to avoid breeding. Yeah, I know. Fat chance.

He talks about how this site is a waste of time, but is still filling out a profile and posting pictures. Really, this whole section is confusing and full of stupid. I wonder if he’s confused about why he’s still single.  If so, I think I might have an idea why…

My Dad, Charlie Brown

I have literally hundreds of great soccer memories.  After 20 years of soccer (many of which I played on multiple teams), I could go on for hours about the magical plays, incredible screw-ups, disastrous weather, and hilarious mishaps that happened to my teammates and myself.  However, today I’m going to write about one of my absolute favorite memories.

Like many of my recent posts, this is once again a story from when I was younger and lived in Eastern Washington.

Each season, right before our big spring soccer tournament, the team had a parents-versus-players soccer game.  It was always a lot of fun, mostly because my team almost always tromped our parents.  During this particular game, however, the weather had been less than cooperative.  It had rained all day and I remember thinking that I was going to be really sad if we couldn’t play our parents.  This year my dad was going to play.  He had been pushing me to get more into basketball, but he had never played soccer before (to my knowledge). I figured that if I had to play his favorite sport, it was completely fair that he had to try mine.

Thankfully, the weather cleared up just in time and we were able to play as planned, although it was really muddy.  Not the puddle muddy, though.  This was the thick, slimy mud that you get when the ground is saturated with water, but not quite saturated enough to form puddles.  My teammates and I loved it, of course.  We had cleats.  The parents, on the other hand, made sure to be very careful because most of them were just wearing regular athletic shoes.

I’ve pretty much always played defense.  I learned early on that I could greatly reduce the amount of running I had to do if I played back.  How, you ask?  Once a defender gets to the ball, they clear it and then can stop running. Therefore, if I got to the ball first, I got to stop running first.  Midfield never seems to stop running and forwards/strikers are constantly making runs while the person with the ball passes to someone else. Before you start asking, yes, I did play keeper (and still do). Much less running, but also more jammed fingers and bruises.

Tragically, the coach liked to switch things up during the parent v players game.  I had to play forward while the girls who rarely played back got to play my coveted defense position.  I think that the coach figured that it would be fairer if we ended up playing positions that we weren’t very good at so that the dads and moms had something almost resembling a fighting chance.

While I stood at the halfway line, waiting for us to get the ball back, I saw my dad surge into a giant opening in the defense and Kelli’s dad passed him the ball.  Now, my dad is a big guy.  He’s 6’4” and had played basketball for most of his life, so he wasn’t just any dad.  He was the athletic dad.  I cringed as he set up the ball, knowing full well that if he sent that thing at our poor goalkeeper, she’d probably break an arm.

He planted his foot and I almost looked away, not wanting to witness the bloodbath that I knew was about to take place.  Except that it never happened.  Rather than crushing the ball and sending it screaming into the goal, my dad’s foot slipped out from under him in fine Charlie Brown fashion.

I’m not sure if you know this, but when a guy as big as my dad hits a patch of swampy, slimy, icky mud with the amount of force that he did, they will actually flip so that they are parallel to the ground before actually starting to fall back to earth. True story.

As my dad hit the ground with a wet “splat,” the other girl that was playing forward with me turned and said, “Hey, isn’t that your dad?”

While Kelli’s dad assisted my dad to his feet, I quickly responded with, “No, no, that’s Kelli’s dad.”  Then I jogged off out of earshot so that I didn’t have to answer the question again.

Fortunately, my dad was fine, albeit very, very muddy. When the game ended (I don’t even remember who won) and my dad looked for me, I went up to him and, without making eye contact, muttered, “I’ll meet you at the car.” I was far too embarrassed to be seen with Charlie Brown dad.  I mean, my dad was supposed to be awesome and fantastic and amazing at every sport, ever, on the face of the earth. This joker?  What would people think if they realized that my dad was that dad? Obviously that would make me a laughingstock.  The entire school would laugh at me.  Forever. And no, it never occurred to me that absolutely nobody cared that my dad pulled a Charlie Brown.

My father, wonderful person that he is, understood my embarrassment and met me by the parking lot and we walked out to the car together.  To this day he will say that he’s grateful that he was never a real soccer player.  We aren’t sure if his insurance would have ever been able to cover the amount of damage he would have inflicted on himself. 

Despite a long soccer career, multiple awards, and tournament wins, I can honestly say that this is the best soccer memory I have, beyond a doubt.  One of these days I might be able to convince my dad to try soccer again, but probably not as a participant.  Perhaps I’ll talk him into joining me for an MLS game the next time he’s in town. Certainly worth consideration…

High School Science Class

In high school there were a lot of fun people, a lot of weird people, a lot of interesting people, and a lot of popular people (I was not one of the popular people).  However, there was a special category that I reserved for those that were spectacularly stupid.  This is a story about one such person.

In high school science classes, we were assigned lab partners.  I think that the teachers wanted to pair up the smart kids with the less intelligent or less motivated students to ensure everyone passed the class.  That way the teachers wouldn’t be stuck with all of the special little morons for another year.

I always knew that I would be paired with someone who had little or no motivation.  This year, however, I got a not-so-pleasant surprise.  Not only was my lab partner a flaming pile of fecal matter, he self-identified as a member of the Aryan Nations.  Seriously.  He actually tried to explain to me how “white power is just the way the world works.” 

To be fair to my teacher, I’m 99% certain that he had no idea that the one minority student in the class was paired with the guy who couldn’t wait to move to Idaho to be a white supremacist anarchist. Actually, I’m not convinced that my partner even knew what an anarchist is let alone correctly identified himself as one.

Anyhow, my partner’s racial/ethnic preferences were made blindingly clear to me on the day that he explained that he understood that I didn’t choose to be born to a mixed race family.  In fact, he didn’t hold it against me at all (thanks?) and was totally okay with being my lab partner for the year. However, he did ask that I simply take the time and make an effort to “truly embrace your white half.”

I’m serious.  You have no idea how much I wish that I were making this up. 

Rather than becoming offended, however, I wondered what he meant by that.  Was I only supposed to use the right half of my body?  Was I not allowed to use my legs?  Did I have to focus on making sure that my eyes looked extra wide all of the time?  Was I supposed to wear makeup to hide the darker pigment of my skin?  I couldn’t figure out for the life of me what he meant by his request.

Further evidence that I was an idiot in high school: I didn’t report this to the teacher or school and I stayed his lab partner for the rest of the semester. I continued to be confused by him as he said at one point that he “don’t really like minorities, but I’ll make an exception for you,” and “You’re one of the only non-white people that I like.”  I once again highlight that I was one of literally less than a dozen minority students at my high school. I highly doubt that this guy knew more than one or two other people that weren’t white.

To this day, I occasionally recall this guy from high school and always laugh.  I wonder if things like this are still prevalent opinions and beliefs back in my hometown.  Friends that still live in the area have told me that there has been a lot of development since I moved away seven or eight years ago, but I’d like to point out that the overall voting trend has stayed the same and, in some instances, has become more conservative, if anything.

Maybe I’ll figure out what on earth this poor idiot was telling me some day.  Maybe I won’t ever know what the ignorant teenage white supremacist meant (I just realized that such a description is redundant in oh-so-many ways). In any case, at least I can laugh at it now and I’ve done what I can to not only embrace “my white half” but also to embrace my “non-white half” and as many other aspects of “me” that I can. 

Evidence that Racism Isn't Dead

Every once in awhile I get blown away by someone.  In this case it was not a good thing.

I went over to Eastern Washington for a friends wedding. At one point I stopped at a grocery store in this sleepy town of around 30,000 residents so that I could pick up some allergy medicine. While I was paying at the register, a punk high school kid walked out of the store, clearly not paying for the items in his hands. The cashier rolled her eyes and said, “Yeah, they do that all the time.  Those gangbangers just take whatever they feel like.”

I gave her one of my “are you serious” looks at that point, hoping that she was joking.  She was, after all, only about 16 or 17 years old herself. Maybe she was just being a sarcastic high school student.

Unfortunately, she continued, “I’m just waiting for them to come in here some day and shoot everyone. I know that one day I’m going to get shot.”

While this would normally result in little more than an eye roll from me, she directed that last sentence at the guy behind me in line.  The Mexican guy.  This little white high school girl seriously looked at the only Mexican guy in line to buy his groceries (in this case those groceries were some dish soap and a soda) and talked about how she thinks gangbangers are going to shoot her.

What. The. Hell.

I was so stunned that I could not think of anything to say to this little princess.  Looking back on this situation, I’m livid that I didn’t use the opportunity to stand up for the poor guy behind me. He did nothing to earn that kind of negative attention.  There was nothing to set him apart from any of us in line other than the tone of his skin. 

It’s incredible that people think that racism is no longer a problem in the US. If something like this ever happens around me again, I hope that I have the wherewithal to respond and tell the person speaking that they shouldn’t be making assumptions like that about people.

Baby Basketball

One of the best parts of visiting home is talking about the ridiculous things that happened while I was growing up.  Today I actually learned something new about how I reacted when my dad asked me about playing basketball.

Just for some background, I am very accident prone.  However, I come by it honestly.  When I was younger, my dad managed to get a substantial cut on one of his fingers during a game.  We had to go to the hospital so that he could get stitches.  When he finally got back to basketball, I was thrilled.  Not because I had any particular love of basketball, but because basketball days were the only time that I got money from my mom to buy a soda from the magical soda machine that had strawberry punch soda.  To this day, I cannot figure out what on earth that soda was, but it's the only machine I can remember seeing that had those little red and pink cans.

I had just put in my two quarters (does anyone else remember when a vending machine soda only cost 50 cents?) and was gleefully preparing to open the can when my mother came dashing out of the gym. She told me to quickly grab my things because we had to take Dad back to the hospital for more stitches. At this point I rolled my eyes at her and said, "But he already had stitches last time!"

Despite my irritation, we once more appeared at the hospital for stitches.  My dad jokes that his medical file would probably be about 6 inches thick with just a list of his sports-related injuries.  Looking back on it, I'm not entirely certain that the medical staff didn't recognize him on sight.

When I finally became old enough to play in a basketball league, my dad was very excited. I was fast from playing soccer and I was scrappy because I was always one of the smallest girls on the team.  He had also had me practice jumps so that I'd be extra-prepared for that wonderful day when I would step out onto the basketball court.

He asked me, "Well, honey, what would you say to playing basketball? You're old enough to join a team now." His grin was cheshire-like in its delight.

I looked at him skeptically.  "No, I don't really want to play."

Shocked, he responded with, "Why not? Do you not like basketball?"

Precocious daughter that I was, I told him very matter-of-factly that, "No, I like basketball just fine.  I just don't like hospitals."

Eventually my dad convinced me to play basketball and I never had to go to the hospital because of a basketball-related injury.  However, I think that this is one of his most humorous basketball memories of me.

Small Town Girl?

I never thought of my hometown as particularly rural.  Sure, I had friends that lived on farms and raised animals or grew crops.  Sure, I knew people who drove 45 minutes to get to the grocery store.  Sure, the number of guns and diesel trucks nearly outnumbered people. However, I lived in a city.  My school district had two whole high schools. There are two colleges in my hometown and a state university less than an hour away.  It never occurred to me that these things might not have been “proof” that I lived in a big city.  I knew I wasn’t living in New York or LA, but it was still pretty big, right? I didn’t realize how small it really was until I moved away to college.

In hindsight, there were things that happened when I was little that horrify me today. Nothing sinister or violent, of course, but things that are just not okay.  For example:

“Coach, why do you always make me play in the outfield position facing the sun? I don’t like it.” My 10-year-old self rubbed at her eyes, frustrated at how boring the outfield was in elementary softball.  Also, why was the sun always at just the right angle to make the visor on my giant softball hat useless?

Coach got down on one knee, making him only slightly taller than me. “Well, you see, it’s easier for you than the other girls.”

After a moment of confusion, I exercised my razor-sharp wit and responded with, “I don’t get it.”

Coach smiled at me and said simply, “The other girls all need to squint when they face the sun. You’re already naturally squinting.”

As an adult, I look back on that interaction and am outraged.  As a kid I took it in stride and thought smugly to myself, “I am genetically superior,” while trotting out to take my sun-facing outfield position, eyes squinting so much that they were nearly shut.

Now that I have lived in an actual city for the last seven years, I realize that my hometown was much less citified than I thought.  However, it really wasn’t a bad place to grow up.  Despite the ridiculous assumptions and interactions with people, they were generally not saying these things out of malice, but were speaking from a position of ignorance.  One day maybe I’ll want to go back for more than a week at a time, but until that day arrives, I’m going to stay in my adopted city and appreciate that now I can finally blend in.