You might wonder why I haven’t mentioned a word about WifeQuest 9000 since posting a post saying I’m single. Maybe you’ve assumed that things are going really poorly, and I don’t want to talk about it. That might be what I would have assumed.
The truth is that I’ve had to wait because of a prank that needed to happen…
After writing that post, I got way more responses than I anticipated. This swamped me with email, especially because I didn’t lay out any sort of process for introducing me. So some introductions had pictures, some didn’t; some had locations, some didn’t; some were directly to me, others directly to the girl, others to both. It quickly became a mess and I fell behind in returning emails.
So, first, if I didn’t write you back, or if you introduced me and I didn’t thank you: sorry. I got overwhelmed and was traveling at the time. The quality of introductions was really good and I’m grateful for them.
As all of this tapered off, I got one late introduction. It was from a girl named Chloe. I met her and her husband once at Samovar, and we’ve exchanged a few emails over the years. She CC’d me with a girl named Justine, with a full intro about her.
My first inclination was to add it to the list of “emails to get to”, because I was already behind on email, and second, because it wasn’t clear Justine knew that she was being introduced. A few of the intros I got seemed to be blindsiding the girl (“Here’s my friend’s #, you should call her!”), and I tended to avoid those.
A few days later, Justine wrote back. In her email signature was a link to her website, which hosted links to facebook, twitter, github, and instagram. I clicked Instagram and…
…well, before I get to that, let’s go back a few months.
It was the second day of our cruise, from Vancouver to Tokyo. We were seated at lunch with other passengers who happened to have gotten to the restaurant at the same time as us. A nice couple started telling us stories, and mentioned that they had daughters…
“That’s great news,” I said, “because I’m about to start dating again on January first. Let’s set up an arranged marriage to save me some time…”
I always like joking around with the older generations on cruise ships. Actually, I like joking around with anyone. The woman played along, and soon I was preemptively calling her “mom”.
Over the following two weeks, we ran into each other a lot. They joined us for tea one morning, and she came to our business-lunch event one day and offered advice. I’d call her mom whenever I saw her, and she’d sometimes show up with a picture of her daughter, always a little too distant to really see. I’d try to swipe to see another picture, and she’d say, “No… maybe tomorrow. Too much for today.”
We got in trouble once for whispering in the back of the theater, planning what we were going to do in Russia. She didn’t give a hoot about the shushers, that’s for sure.
Emails were exchanged, but life is so different and strange on the high seas that you never actually end up staying in touch. And we didn’t.
But now maybe you can guess what I saw on Instagram. I saw my cruise mother and father staring back at me. Justine’s parents.
I wrote Justine back immediately. No time for smalltalk. You’re not going to believe this, but…
So we met up, and clicked. I had to double check with myself that I liked her, and not just this amazing story that I’d get if we really did start dating. We’ve been dating for a few months now, and things are great.
Of course, this whole post had to wait until we could play a prank on her parents. It’s not often in life you’re handed such a beautiful setup for one. But that’s another story…
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Somehow I have no usable pictures of the two of us yet, so instead a picture of the cruise ship I met her mom on.
We have surprised her parents since I wrote this. Currently trying to get permission to use the video.
Heading across the Atlantic on Sunday on another ship! Can’t wait to meet more mothers!
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