A Real Story

My granddaughter Emma set up my profile on OurTime while I made her lasagna, because I’d tried twice myself and gotten stuck uploading a photo that wasn’t sideways. I’d been widowed three years by then, taught fourth grade for thirty-one of them, and had exactly zero interest in “putting myself out there,” as my daughter kept calling it like I was a casserole at a potluck. But the house had gotten so quiet that I was narrating my own grocery lists out loud, so I let Emma do it.

The first man I met brought his own thermos of prune juice to Olive Garden and explained, unprompted, the state of his gallbladder for eleven minutes by my count. The second one was lovely but spent the whole date talking about his late wife’s pot roast recipe, which I understood completely and also found exhausting, because I have my own dead spouse to grieve, thank you. I told Emma I was done. She said give it one more month.

Then there was Walt, a retired electrician from two towns over, who messaged me because my profile mentioned I’d been to every state park in Ohio and he said he’d been to all but three and wanted my opinion on which ones weren’t worth the gas money. We argued cheerfully about Hocking Hills for forty-five minutes before he ever asked me to coffee. He still brings his own snacks on dates, not out of any digestive concern, just because he doesn’t trust restaurant portion sizes, and I’ve come to find that endearing rather than strange.

It’s been fourteen months now. He fixed my porch light without being asked, which after thirty-one years of marriage I understand is basically a marriage proposal in old-man language. I’m not saying every senior site story ends like mine, but I am saying don’t quit after the prune juice guy. Give it the one more month.