Non-quilting post - sort of

 Warning – non quilting post (which may come as a surprise/relief, but I’m sure you can deal with it...) The content does start and end with quilting… The idea started in discussion with the lovely C2 at quilting group when conversation veered into personal territory. I am single, and I confess to using internet dating sites occasionally. Ok, ok, I’ve dated pretty much every single man in perth who is online and meets my standards – and many who don’t. Friends who are paired up and have been for years are fascinated by the online dating idea and occasionally talk me into letting them look at the profiles of guys who send me messages. This usually involves a bottle of wine, a lot of giggling and the shredding of these poor gentlemen by several merciless women. Sometimes it goes the other way, and I’m accused of being too picky and replies being sent to guys I’d probably have ignored on some totally superficial basis.

Due to my success rate, regardless of whether I’ve been picky or ‘to-hell-with-it’, I won’t suggest either method as successful. I’ve had first dates with a lawyer who cried and told me how he’s communicating with his dead father, and with a trainer who ‘wouldn’t hurt a fly’ but had three restraining orders taken out against him - ‘by crazy crazy women’ he yells maniacally banging his fist on the table. (And both these men thought these good things to share in the first 20 minutes…) I’ve sat mutely for 45 minutes unable to get a word in edgewise as my eyes glaze over during a monologue on football and struggled for the same amount of time trying to get more than a syllable out of an otherwise mute man.

Anyway, back to the discussion with C2, who I didn’t have time to show what some of these profiles are like, so I tried to paint a verbal picture. What gets me about a lot of men’s profiles (and to be fair, I haven’t looked at women’s, but I can’t imagine them being similar) is the total lack of awareness of the opposite sex and their priorities and interests. For example, you don’t have to go far to find a profile that goes something like “I’m into motorsports (cars, bikes, V8 supercars, 4wd-ing, dirtbikes, motorcross) and fishing and sports – AFL, rugby union, rugby league, cricket, basketball”… These are usually accompanied by a series of (invariably bad unrecogniseable) photos: “Me with my motorbike”, “me on a dirt bike”, “me holding a fish”, “me holding a fish and a beer”, “me and my dog”, “me drunk at pub” (usually blurry). If you’re lucky, there’s quite often a “me shirtless taking photo of self in bathroom mirror with phone” one as well... Bonus points if there is the line "I'm looking for my princes"[sic] spelled incorrectly too.

Can you imagine a female equivalent? Should I try my luck with a profile of my own more in line with the genre (of these gentlemen)? Eg. "My interests include shopping: shopping for shoes, clothing (skirts, tops), jewellery, homewares; and craft – sewing, quilting, crochet, knitting, jewellery making… Here’s a photo of me at the shopping centre; here’s a photo of me at the cash register; here’s a photo of me pinning a quilt. Here’s a photo of me draped over my sewing machine…” What do you reckon? Maybe not!