He talks and he talks…
…but he never says anything.
I have this friend, Lynne, that I met online a few years back. We met on Match.com and while there was never a romantic click we have stayed good friends. We stay in touch and swap online dating stories. That is, when either of are actually doing some online dating and not disgusted with the whole process or actually (heaven forbid!) dating someone.
At the time we met Lynne was a freelance web site designer. She now has her own online business and is doing quite well, thank you. She no longer designs web sites. Her online business keeps her quite busy enough. But at that time she did a few web pages just for fun. Mostly on AOL, all are now gone, unfortunately.
If you have done much dating through one of the many dating web sites on the Internet you will start to realize that a good number of the people you meet fall into a few basic categories. Here are a few I have discovered.
The Married Man
You don’t find out that he is married till after you meet him. I guess he figures that the blazing force of his personality and charm will so overwhelm you that you will forget that the only thing he has been looking at for the last half hour is about ten inches below your eyes. And the only thing you have noticed is that band of lighter skin on his left ring finger he is trying to cover up by scratching at it.
The Woman In Denial
You are sitting at the bar waiting to meet her for the first time. You are lost in the foamy malt flavor of the the drink in front of you when what to your horrified eyes should appear? Someone that looks a lot like Drew Carey in a long blonde wig. Someone that does not, in the least, resemble the picture on her profile. You decide to be polite and spend the better part of 45 minutes making small talk, hoping that something happens that will cause you to stand up and yell in a manly voice, “Everybody run for your lives, it’s Godzilla!” No such luck. Before too long (even though it seems longer) you discover that the picture is “a little old.” How old you ask? “About seven years.” Not to mention fifty pounds out of date.
The Man in Denial
Like the Woman In Denial the picture of the man you are meeting was either taken from so far away or was so out of focus that you could make out few details. When you meet you notice a bald spot covering half of his head that, until yesterday, was a “full head of hair.” And the reason you notice it? Because somehow the there has been a local slip in the space-time continuum. With the result that a man who is 6-2 seems shorter than a woman of 5-9 wearing her new boots. You know the ones. The cool new leather ones with the pointed toes and a three-inch heel.
Ahhhh, understanding begins…
The Talking Guy
Every woman has run into this one, regardless of whether or not you have done any online dating. I am sure that you know a guy who has no trouble holding a conversation with no help from you. He talks and talks, and then he laughs at something he said. There is a pregnant pause as he looks at you expectantly. Then rushes on saying that you must not have much of a sense of humor because he just said something very funny and you didn’t laugh.
The Talking Guy® will talk about almost anything but his favorite subject is himself. How he is under appreciated at work and has all these great ideas that will Change The World. How his last girlfriend just didn’t understand him…. Meanwhile you have been transfixed by the bit of pretzel that has magically affixed itself to his lower lip and hung there through the last 15 minutes of irrelevant drivel he has been spouting.
Lynne spent the better part of two hours at Jose Tejas with some guy that did not ask one question past, “Hi, are you Lynne?” and she only had to use 3 words of her vocabulary, “Yes!” “Wow!” and “Really?”
She was so disgusted and amused by the whole episode she used her considerable design talents to post a web page on AOL. That web page consisted of the single animated gif you see above and two lines of text, one above and one below the image.
When I first brought up the idea for this particular page with Lynne. She wanted me to mention someone she had dated. Someone who fit the definition of a Talking Guy perfectly,
but not the particular talking guy that inspired the Talking Guy® logo. She wanted this done so that when you Googled his name this page would come up. It was a small revenge for all the pictures of them together that are still (after more than a year since they broke up) on his personal web page. I decided that wouldn’t be a good idea.
That “Talking Guy” page stayed there for years. It eventually went away all by itself (no wonder it’s number one!). Since I hate to see good sarcasm go to waste I decided to post it here.
Originally posted before I added WordPress to this site. Published date is approximate.