Well….  So most of us are familiar with the concept of  how  “Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus.”  Smack dab here in the middle is good old Earth, where we try to come together.  That is exactly what my (hopefully) series of Swirling on Planet Earth is going to address.  Apologies to those of you that don’t find it to be your taste… it is probably going to seem part soap-opera as it is going to focus on the swirling journey from the male perspective.  Those of you still reading that have not moved on to a different post, well, I am willing to share my personal trials and tribulations.  Starting with…. Some of you know how many of my posts ended with a bit of a tagline of “I don’t get out much”….. my swirling journey has taken a new step and I am getting out now since I met someone and am dating.  I am going to need a lot of advice on my journey, though, and am going to share with those of you STILL reading…

So far the sake of ease I will call my new “friend” Bee.  I met Bee online despite my being somewhat cynical about online social and dating sites.  I am one of those that believe for every 1000 people on those sites – especially the one I met Bee on – 999 of them are creepy, psychotic, or both.  1 out of 1000 doesn’t seem like very good odds, do they?  Yet…. That one in a thousand… they are out there.  With hundreds of thousands of folks on a site then there are good needles in that haystack.  So yes, you have to spend a lot more time vetting folks you meet online.  Hey, they odds of winning the lottery are astronomical too.  But folks DO win sometimes.

Bee wasn’t going to answer my first couple messages.  You know how on those sites you read profiles and wink at or message or “Friend” interesting possibilities.  My usual is the message along the lines of “Maam, may I politely wish you a good evening”  or “I hope you don’t mind me saying so but that dress you are wearing in the profile pic really is pretty”.  I get hit and miss responses.  Like I said, Bee wasn’t going to respond to mine at first but her 19 year old daughter (I will call her B1) convinced her to respond with some other equally safe message.  To be honest, I do not recall what it was.  One funny thing with those initial encounters… both my pic and my age were on my profile.  I wanted to be upfront rather than play games and have to Un-Do those games later.  Even though Bee was sitting as she had B1 write the response out, B1 was afraid that I would be scared off by too much of an age gap so upon knowing I am 48, B1 told me that “She” (answering for Bee) was 43.  Acceptable gap….  I have since found out that Bee is 41 and we laugh about that gap and how B1 was afraid of scaring me off if I knew that real number.  No way.  I have often joked with my own daughter, who is 19 and I will call EJ1, that at my age the acceptable dating age range is plus or minus 10 years.  In my current case, that means 38 – 58.  This relationship stuff is tough…