Can you help me pick out a. . .

(7:12 P.M. – 7:41 P.M. US Central Time/Thursday/HCC library)

[imood mood at time of entry: weird]

a mail-order bride?

That’s right, you read correctly. I’m here in the library, as usual, and I have just been enjoying Gary Jones‘s (of Stargate fame) blog based on GateWorld. I had been laughing myself absolutely silly to the point of a headache and breathlessness while reading Gary’s entertaining as all get out entries, when the guy next to me asks me my opinion of something on his computer screen.

Now, I had sort of seen that he was looking at a light-colored site (pink!) out the side of my eye, but I politely refused to fully look over at his screen. People who look and read over my shoulder are one of my biggest pet peeves, so I try to avoid it. Even when I am specifically asked to look at this thing or another, I often wish that I hadn’t. Awkward conversations or I’m busy are usually the reason for this.

Anyway, I look over and I see this picture of this beautiful girl, no, woman, smiling up at me. To the left of the picture is a profile containing her age, weight, height, martial status, level of English comprehension, and more details underneath all of the basics.

After about a moment of glancing over the woman’s picture, the guy asks me what do I think of her, and whether they’d go well together. I initially said “Wow” in reaction to seeing her and told him that she was very pretty, almost like a doll, which was true. To say that she was pretty truly was an understatement, but who wants to be caught gushing over someone else’s girl, you know?

Well, I gave him the old hem and haw routine and politely asked questions like whether they got along well or not before telling him that it could work. Now truthfully, I don’t know one way or the other, but if I was going purely on looks, which my Society-created vain side of me was urging me to do, I would have thought not a chance in Hell. However, in spite of the shallowness that was chomping away at me, I was more concerned with how quickly I could make a note of this event.

I mean, I have seen this guy around the library on several occasions, and never, in all the times that I’ve seen him here, did I imagine that he had been shopping for a wife. We briefly discussed why women marry older men after he told me that women in that area liked older men.

He didn’t even have to tell me where this porcelain beauty was from, because I already knew, somewhere in Europe where the economy wasn’t the greatest thing around since melted butter over fresh-baked bread. Even so, I asked, to be polite. He told me that she was, in fact, from Europe, and that he would be going to go visit her.

He told me about the layout of his trip and how he had another girl previously from that same area. He went to see her for about two weeks and would be going to see this new girl for two weeks. Well, he’d be in Paris for three days, and then he would go to the girl’s home country.

Now, I know that I can accomplish plenty of things, but I didn’t know that matchmaking men to mail-order brides was among my talents. Who knew? Frankly, I didn’t even know that there were men who would choose, and could afford to support, a mail-order bride in my neighborhood. I’ve seen those types of men on television and in magazines, but I never thought that I’d meet one such person here in my own neighborhood. Maybe in the rich, “white” areas of town, yes, but not here.

That’s not to say that my side of town is ridiculously poor, but I didn’t think that anyone had “mail-order” money either. I guess that just goes to show.

I also guess that that guy thinks I moved away from him because I was weirded-out or what have you. In truth, I wanted to type this up on a keyboard whose keys didn’t stick and on a computer that wasn’t right next to the guy that I wanted to discuss. I mean, it’s bad enough that I am writing about him while he’s still here in the library and after it just happened. What’s that saying about not having any shame? I wonder. . .

Anyway, in the wrap up, I did notice that the woman he’s going to meet soon is younger than I am. Her birthday? April 13, 1986. And already, she’s considering marriage. I can’t help but wonder, is love and attraction. Or, is just a need to get out of her home country for a nice “American” man?

Danielle

ETA: Oh, and here are these two bits. If you haven’t had a chance or missed it, you can vandelize my brink wall here. I have been meaning to put this up here for ages, but I always forget. Hand over your brain for immediate consumption. That is all. : )