Thursday, February 13, 2014

Funny valentine

All I wanted to do was read my eCard.

Wednesday was my 63rd birthday, and I found an alert in my email that morning presenting me with a birthday wish video.

Okay, I thought. That might be fun.

So I clicked on it. After all, I'd gotten eCards before. I knew what I was doing.

Uh-oh. Instead of getting an eCard, I got something that resembled a bluish Facebook background and told me that if I accepted the terms — there were about 20 items telling me that this and that would show up for my friends to see — then I could view the card.

So I accepted the terms, thinking my friends know everything about me anyway. I'm a pretty transparent guy, I think.

Anyway, after accepting those terms, I expected to see my card. Instead, I got what amounted to be another questionnaire, with "decline" or "accept" buttons at the bottom of the page.

Some of the stuff they were asking for was a little more personal — hair color, eye color, etc — so I didn't fill out any of it, but I clicked "accept" because I still wanted to see my damn birthday card.

Instead, I got yet another page, this one welcoming me to Zoosk. Apparently, Zoosk is the Facebook equivalent of eHarmony, or any similar dating site.

Dating site? Whoa, whoa, whoa. This didn't have anything to do with my birthday. I closed every window on my computer as fast as I could and ran for my life. I don't need a date. I'm married.

I thought I was safe and started playing a computer game when, ding, within minutes my email alerted me to new mail. I looked. It had the familiar Facebook charm about it, so I opened it, thinking somebody had tagged me.

"Tagged" would be an understatement. Inside was a form message from "Pamster," 60, complete with her picture (a mug shot), and she wanted to meet me. Accept or decline. I think I saw "Zoosk" somewhere on the page.

Now I was scared. Really scared. Sweating scared. Kim was in the bathroom putting on makeup and I didn't know what to do. Should I tell her that I'm now on a dating site and that it was an accident? Would she believe me? And how do I stop this? I could be under a deluge of lonely, post-menopausal women within the hour if I didn't do something now.

So I told her. Kim calmly put on her "What are you, some kind of idiot?" face along with her makeup and told me to find out how to unsubscribe.

I got back on Zoosk, clicking this and that until I found something that said "Your account." I clicked on that, and found another option that said "cancel," hoping it did just that.

And it did. I clicked and Zoosk said it was sorry to see me go, although I didn't think they were really sincere about it.

Whew. I felt I'd made the great escape. I was safe once more.

I just hope Pamster didn't think I was leading her on.


1 comment:

  1. I don't know, might have been interesting to be "under a deluge of lonely post-menopausal women" and I could use a new domestic client.

    ReplyDelete