Dear-Kids-I-Met-Your-Father-Off-the-Internet2

Dear Kids,

Mama thinks it’s time that I tell you how I met Daddy. Brace yourselves because our story isn’t the traditional “boy meets girl, they fall in love, have a huge wedding and then get married”. Nope, I think by now you know your folks do things a little differently. By the time you read this, I’m sure couples who met from dating websites won’t even be this HUGE thing but in 2010, it was still quite the taboo.

…Was mama so unattractive and unlucky with love that she ran to a website to meet a man? Nooooo!
…Was daddy such a weirdo that he felt the need to scour the internet for pretty ladies to meet? Well, maybe. Nooooo!

Times were hard back then, kids. It’s not like in the olden days (you know, when Grandma and Grandpa were growing up) where you could meet someone at the grocery store or at church. Okay, yessss, that may have been a possibility but let’s face it, it’s hard to lock eyes with a guy when you’re scrolling on your smartphone trying to pull up that coupon app. Distracted people are hard to attract.

But that one fateful night when one of mama’s friends thought it was a good idea to join Match.com on a whim, one thing led to another and well, I met your father. Technologically, at first.

Daddy and I like to go back and forth about who reached out to who first. He said I sent him a message but I’m pretty sure he sent me the message. Mama’s memory is a bit fuzzy (okay, whatever…I sent him the message) but all I know is your Daddy had me at first comma. I’m not kidding. During a time when people mostly typed in acronyms, your pops manage to woo me by typing in complete sentences with correct punctuation and spelling. Mama was smitten. Until I met Daddy.

Our first date sucked. Mama is pretty awkward. In a “laugh to appear engaging, creepily smile too much” way but Daddy is pretty awkward, too. You would have thought we’d be a match made in heaven, right? No. We ate over a meal and the conversation was barely there. How crazy is that when weeks ago we were able to email and text message each other our life stories?

Well, also…Daddy did fib a little bit and said he was taller than he actually was. Is mama shallow? I don’t know but let’s face it…5’9 is totally different than 5’11. I’m just sayin’…

We went on a second date. That also sucked. But as a single girl in a big city with jobs, hobbies and friends that kept me busy, I felt like I should give the dude a third chance and well, I did. We sat in the car talking for almost 5 hours. It was as if the verbal floodgates opened. We became a bit more comfortable with each other. I remember going to work the next day on 2 hours of sleep feeling as if I had sipped an energy drink. I was on cloud nine, ten and eleven. I was so happy.

A year and some change later, we got married in some random lady’s backyard. We wore t-shirts and jeans. We went to Disney World to celebrate. No one was happy that we decided to elope. We didn’t want to go into debt trying to fund a wedding. Even a budget wedding didn’t seem like a good idea so we did what felt right.

Married

And here we are. Your parents. Your parents with the very nontraditional love story that Mama used to be embarrassed to tell people. Let our story be a lesson to you. There is no one path to love, happiness and success. You don’t have to take the popular routes to end up where you want to be. Take risks, go with your gut and be open-minded.

But if you do decide to date someone you’ve met from the internet (you know…when you’re in your 30’s), make sure you’ve Google stalked them for close to a month before meeting them. Promise me that, okay?

XOXO,
Mama

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