"Well Arnold," I sez, after a few cursory fingerstrokes. "Preliminary indications are that she is now married to a guy named Ed up in Bend, Oregon. Old Ed may not want you sniffing around his chicken coop. Furthermore that pert young vision of womanhood may not be the same glorious visage that you still have trapped in those googley eyed memory bank's of yours. May I add that gravity and mass has a way of catching up to all of us. She may not be the same comely lass that you remember."
"I know, I know Robert. I don't have to have her. I just want to see how she is doing, catch up, you know..."
I reluctantly assented. My wife has just hooked up with a girl that she hasn't talked to since camp on Facebook and the same thing is probably being repeated all over the world. I just know that the girl that sat across from me in the fourth grade was seriously into me and that we can now finally get something going.
I ended up at a brick wall with Arnold, landing at the door at one of these social networking services, My Life™, that would give me Dawn's address and phone number, if only I would sign up for a $5.95 per month fee. I tabled the thought, not really wanting to put my credit card number on the web.
***
I get a call from AmEx yesterday. "Mr. Sommers, we have had some funny looking charges come up on your account today. Did you authorize a $1495.00 charge to My Life™?" There were two other bogus online transactions that I never made as well, totalling in the thousands. I quickly cancelled the card. What is strange is that I never gave this site my account number. Just how did they get my Amex number? Did they lay a trojan horse on my rig? Is this particular company a fraud or somebody inside the company? I read something the other day about the lack of safety on wireless networks, how the online kernels are now getting easily swiped in space by unscrupulous thieves with the new technology.
Sorry, Arnold. Be careful everybody.
1 comment:
A comment on the 'Quest' for the beauty, the beauty that was, that was left behind, the one you should have talked to, that you should have held onto, that is waiting just around the corner, if I can only locate them hiding in that midsummer shopping mall temporary job of Facebook, Myspace, the online yellowpages, whitepages, Linked In, My Life.
They might not have made it through. It's been awhile. 20, 30, 40, even 50 years is a LONG time to expect someone to be hale and hearty, even recognizable, but also alive. Accidents, murder, spousal abuse, Aids, natural disasters, suicide......We might have left them behind in the last decade, but maybe they didn't even make it through their 30s, or 40s?
And what if we find them? Are we not now going to make the same mistakes all over again and realize that one hot, baking afternoon at the Renaissance Fair, with flowers in her hair was all it was ever going to be?
At last I offer this. The great beauty is retiring. The one we all measured everyone else to. The singular untouchable one destined
for the greatness that was out there. After two kids, two marriages and a life off the 'A' list, it's now official. The great beauty is retiring......to Sun City.
If you take up the quest.....be prepared.
Ciao Babe,
Ponce De Leon
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