There's A Lid For Every Pot

Last night I was perusing my viewing options on the TV when I came across the movie 'Must Love Dogs'. I watched a few minutes of the flick, not because it's a great movie, but because I'm a giant sucker for John Cusak. Hello? Lloyd Dobler, anyone?

The movie made several references to online dating. Any time online dating is mentioned, I always think of my friend, B. She has a truly exquisite online dating experience.

First off, some background. B is the smartest person that I know. She's absolutely brilliant, articulate, and endlessly entertaining. She completely understands things that I can not even pronounce. She doesn't watch TV anymore since the producers of Jeopardy dumbed it down for us regular people. B reads the Harvard Law Review for fun. 

For comparison's sake, I read People magazine for fun.

Why she is friends with me is quite a puzzle, but I don't question it too much because I really like basking in the glow of her smartness.

B was married for a few years to a very smart man. For reasons she's never discussed, the marriage ended in divorce. Several months after the divorce, B decided that she'd like to start dating again and she tried all of the local options: friends of friends, co-workers, bars, and her church's singles group. Nothing clicked.

After much research, B decided to give online dating a whirl. Her thinking was that an algorithm would have a better shot at finding someone with common interests. I agreed with her. The online service would have a much greater chance of finding someone else who liked to read Harvard Law Review, you know for fun, than she would have finding this person in a bar on a Friday night.

B filled out the application, uploaded a photo, and waited for the magic to happen. Actually, she waited the computer to convert all of her information into bits of data and use a complex mathematical equation to generate a list of potential suitors. Blah, blah, blah. I like to call it magic.

Two days later, she had her first potential match. The message contained information that would shape her romantic future. With great excitement, she held her breath and clicked to open the email. After quickly reading the message, the breath that she'd been holding came out in one giant whoosh.

Of all the single men in her area who scored high on the compatibility scale, the online dating site had matched her with a potential beau who scored the highest (insert drumroll please) … her ex-husband.

When B related the story to me, I wondered out loud what the odds of the online matchmakers selecting her ex-husband were. Even though it was a rhetorical question, B answered me with the actual odds.

Like I said, she's really smart.

And even though I think it's hilarious the two got matched up, she's smart enough to not date her ex-husband. Fast forward a couple of years and now B is happily married to the only other person on the planet (well, in her zip code anyway) who reads the Harvard Law Review, you know for fun, proving once again there's a lid for every pot. Pin It Now!