Hey there, loyal readers. Just a heads up, LSD are busy ladies at the moment. Between moving, vacays, bridal showers and bdays, we may be a bit light on posts this week. Thanks for your patience 🙂 (L, I know how much you appreciated that emoticon).
Anyway, happy Message Monday! This one hits close to home for me–literally.
The part of the message that I blacked out? You guessed it: my high school.
Running into someone you know on okcupid is a very real fear of mine, much like being murdered by a date and becoming the subject of a Lifetime movie. You put your profile out there, and sure it’s “anonymous”, but your picture is still attached to it. And it’s the f-cking internet; nothing is really anonymous (except, we hope, this blog!). So yes, sometimes I worry that my boss could stumble upon my profile and read the sex questions I answered. Or a co-worker. Or a family member. Or a crush or hook up from back in the day. Basically anyone I’ve met, ever. Because of this fear, the number of questions about sex (there are hundreds) that I’ve actually answered basically amount to:
Also at the top of this list: former classmates. And don’t worry, this isn’t the first time this has happened to me, or even the second. TWICE before I’ve run into dudes I went to high school with, I guess hardly surprising given the fact that my hometown is less than 10 miles outside of Philly. L and I went to a pretty small high school, though; I believe our graduating class was 175-ish people. We literally know every single person in our class and in the classes 1-2 grades below and above. So I honestly wasn’t expecting to have to play the ‘who the eff is that?’ game until this fall at my (drumroll please) ten year reunion. (F-ck, I’m old). And I figured at least then I’d be with my friends, we’d be drunk, and possibly decide to perform an impromptu interpretive dance:
So when this dude messaged me and I didn’t recognize him at all, I figured I was just having a brain fart and that my friends would ID him immediately. I sent out the appropriate mass text with that screen cap, plus his full profile picture which it’s worth noting is a legitimate head shot/glamour shot (which you may recall is on my list of profile pic no no’s from back in the day).Â
Can’t say it any better than my friend did:
Anyway, no one had ANY IDEA who this terrifying 29 year old bisexual claiming to be our classmate was. So I responded to him, curious now about this mystery:
Ummm okay.
1. ‘We probably never crossed paths in school’–Creepy, slash you’re obviously right since I have NO IDEA who you are.
2, ‘You clearly appear to be the best looking’
Hey, asshole. First of all, that’s not even true. My friends are mad cute. And since you claim to have such a stellar memory, they were also adorable in high school, even though we all had slightly more questionable fashion sense back then.
Second, based on your picture I would bet that you’re probably on a registered sex offenders list somewhere, so I’m not really sure you’re in the position to judge anyone on their looks. Third, do you think that I’m actually pathetic enough to fall for this blatantly disingenuous, totally lame attempt at flattery? Oh gee, a creepy stranger on okcupid claiming to know me from 10 years ago insulted my friends, but he thinks I’m cute! BE STILL MY HEART.
Men.
I was officially grossed out by this mystery acquaintance, but now it was basically my mission in life to figure out who he was. I was this close to making my mom go into our attic, find one of my yearbooks and flip through the entire class of 2002 over the phone with me, but I figured I’d save her that trip if I could and check with some other friends from high school first (you’re welcome, mom).
I saw some of those friends on Saturday night, and the search continued. We named every kid we could think of with that first name, but nothing checked out. We texted another friend who lives in NYC and put her on the task force. She thought she had a guess, but then someone actually did consult a yearbook upon returning home and ruled it out:
So as of Monday, July 29th at 12:30 pm, the case of the creepy classmate remains open. If anyone from my high school has any leads, they can leave an anonymous tip in the comments section. We’ll see you next time on…