Mutual Picks

Many years ago I started going to estate sales. At first I thought it was kind of creepy to be scavenging a dead person’s stuff, but I acquired many things I loved and changed my mind to thinking that I’d rather have somebody enjoy my good taste after I’m gone than to see useful things end up in a landfill. Every sale always had a handful of aggressive buyers that would plow you over to get something, and so I started going to the basement and garage first. Those were where the random, cheaper things were, where the furniture that wasn’t perfect was parked, the stuff that wasn’t collectible or very valuable. If Mark and I were out on the weekend and passed an estate sale I’d make him stop. He didn’t share my love for this but he indulged me, and once tried to convince me that we should pass on the dining room table and buy the house.

On the way home from work one day I saw a sign for an estate sale and stopped. It was the home of someone who owned a local theater and was well traveled. It had some amazing stuff but what caught my eye was a raw pine dresser in the garage. It had a lot of issues but that finish gave me all the heart eyes and I wanted it bad, but it was priced at $120 which was highly inflated for all of its flaws. I sweetly looked it over and said, “When you’re half price in two days you will be mine.” I needed Mark to go with me to help me get it in the car and told him that after his Saturday morning bike ride and breakfast we needed to “Chop chop get going as soon as you get home.” Mark wasn’t much of a chop-chop-hurry-up kind of guy, especially for an estate sale he didn’t want to go to, so he took his sweet time getting ready to go and all the way there I kept hoping that dresser was still in the garage. As we were walking up the driveway I saw it and was so excited, but as we got closer I noticed the SOLD sign on it and the air went out of my secondhand balloon. Mark said it was too bad it already sold and tried to make things better by offering to go inside the house to see if there was something else I might want but I declined.

As we were driving back to the house I asked Mark to stop at the bakery because I needed to eat my feelings. When we pulled up he said he’d wait in the car because he’d already eaten his wheat germ whatever when he was out with the boys and wasn’t hungry. I found that especially irritating and it must have showed because as I reached the door to go in he was right behind me. We spent $50 and filled a box with scones, ham and cheese croissants, and cinnamon rolls. We scarfed half of it down over a fresh pot of coffee and Mark said it was better than that crappy dresser we missed out on which wasn’t true but I loved him and those scones for trying.

In the spring when Covid hit and everything was locked down, when I was working from home and stuffing my feelings with whatever I could find in the fridge, I got an email from Match that I could join their very successful dating site for free. Between that and some encouragement from a friend I made a login, password, and created a profile. While you can create all that for free, in order to communicate with anyone, or they with you, you have to join Match and make a monthly payment.

Nevertheless, and maybe as an enticement to go full on match, I would get a notification of my mutual picks which conveyed dateable tidbits like…..

No arguers. I’m worn slick from arguing.
In my free time I like to smoke pot and go for a walk.
Don’t message me if you’re a liar.
Let me complete you.
I prefer a woman who likes to cook.
Conservative by day, liberal by night.
I’m a gym rat. Are you? Let’s hook up.

Day after pandemic day these awful matches show up in my email. I’ve seen the same faces over and over and every once in awhile a woman shows up so things have gotten Covid sloppy and unorganized at the Mutual Pick Committee Meeting. Every other day I get an email for a special deal to join to get the full benefits and meet my forever match. It is always my last chance or the best deal ever offered and what started at $36 a month has been whittled to the never-before-offered price of $18.99 if I act now.

Last week someone new showed up in my email. His name was Ben, he was attractive, he was an architect. He liked to build things and I don’t know how this guy slipped through the border wall of duds and was practically begging me to let him build my new kitchen, but Ben the Architect had some potential. That’s when I figured out that all this time that I was getting the free benefits because I was too cheap afraid to join and pay the monthly cost, I was attracting the guys in the basement and garage. If I wanted quality benjamins, I needed to fork over the benjamins to see the better stuff inside the house. But as those things tend to go for me, I forgot my login and my password. I even forgot the fake name I used so I was back in unmatched limbo.

That didn’t last long as a few days later I met someone who did a Tarot card reading on me and I love me some of that hoodoo voodoo witchcraft. She pulled the magician card which means that when it comes to romance I am the one who is going to make the magic happen. That seemed like such a foreign and impossible concept to me that I took notes on what she was saying. Her advice was to make a list of the qualities I would like in someone which took a second since the only thing on the list was Absolutely none of the above in mutual picks.

And now what?

Considering I have enough baggage to jam an airport conveyer belt, and the kind of exploding creative chaos that would make weak men cry, I’ve decided to tuck that magician card into my bag of Crazy Shit I Never Thought I Would Need and abracadabra this wobbly little life of mine.