“Hey Cutie! Let’s have some fun!”

Connie read the online message with a frown.  “Now why would somebody his age be interested in somebody my age? I don’t get it.”  She stared at the picture. A buff, tan, smiling 38 year old guy stared fetchingly out at her. “Hum,” she thought, “he is cute.” She pulled the mouse down and clicked on “Profiles”.  “Let’s see” she murmured to herself, “age, height, weight, job, interests, salary, ah…marital status.” She paused to look harder at the screen; did it say ‘married’?  Wasn’t this a singles dating site? What was a married guy doing on here?

Connie read ‘Gary’s’ message again and could see that he was asking her if she wanted to chat. “No,” she said out loud to the computer screen. “I do not want to chat with you Gary,” she said with an angry click to her mouse.

Connie’s life had taken a turn when, as life tends to do, kids grow up and go away to school. This had happened to her when her only daughter, her baby, Scooter, left four years ago to attend a big name university. With her heart breaking, she had said her goodbyes as they packed up a bunch of her daughter’s things.  Also, as life has a tendency to do, the baby was going to be living much closer to the Dad now. Connie had gotten a chilly feeling that Scooter was going to be spending a lot more time with him now, making up for lost time away from him after the divorce. As Connie had predicted, that is exactly what did happen. Countless nights and weekends spent together watching TV movies, eating home-delivered pizza and baking seemed to be a thing of the past.

So these days, if it wasn’t Scooter’s Dad, it was the boyfriend and if it wasn’t him it was her school or her work and Connie-mom didn’t get to see much of the girl anymore. She got weepy over this from time to time as countless friends tried to cheer her up and talked about the ‘growing up process.’ She didn’t know if they meant hers or the kid’s.

“Growing up and growing old,” Connie said to the room with a gloomy tone. Turning 50 had hurt her ego more than anything else. As far as dating, the pool of men seemed to get smaller every year and statistics about these things indicated that wasn’t just in her mind.

Connie clicked on a message from “Greatguy.” “Oh God, nineteen years old! Gak!” That one actually made her feel a little sick. “Why in the world….” She shook her head, at fifty-five, she knew she did look ‘good for her age’, but still, nineteen? Good God.

“Hey, let’s hook up!” She read the message from Steve from California who was also married and apparently looking for a ‘Friend with Benefits’ and ‘NSA’. Connie studied his profile, cute she thought, too bad about the married part. NSA? She looked at it again; NRA? No, NSA. What the heck? “Oh!” she got a sudden flash, “NSA – no strings attached. Of course.”

 “Oh well,” she clicked off the computer, time to get to the gym.

Continued Part II