Am I Mean?

Learning to date again....

He seemed charming enough. I mean, I did arrive an hour before my friend, and he didn't kick me out of the booth I'd snagged. And he was cute, so I left my business card with the receipt.  How very DC.

His first email came two days later, and despite that the subject line was "Hey Kiddo!" (a term of endearment that I reserve for my younger sister and, therefore, assume that others only use it for siblings, relatives, children, pets, and the like) I responded that it was nice to hear from him. He wrote back asking for my number so we could make plans; I obliged; then he responded saying that we should "deffanately" hang out soon.

This gave me a moment of pause. I'm a stickler for correct spelling and grammar. I can understand and forgive errors in text messages, but in this world of spell-checking smart phones, how does one get away with sending "deffanately"? (And the emails did say 'Sent From My Mobile Device').

His next email came in the form of a Facebook friend request. It was accompanied by a message that he was new to Facebook, and was he doing this right? Almost simultaneously, he sent me a text message to say that he'd sent me a Facebook friend request and had he done it right?

I ignored both. Not only do I tend to avoid making FB friends with people I don't really know (and to say that I 'know' someone includes exchanges on Twitter, regular message board interactions, and posting comments on each others blogs. Basically, if I don't know you in the real world, we at least have a sense of each other online.) but I also wondered why he didn't have any friends on Facebook to explain the rather simple process to him.

This was right before Memorial Day weekend, which included my birthday celebration, a date with another guy, spending a lot of time with friends, seeing my parents, and significant amounts of time spent doing absolutely nothing.  Then I got slammed at work. This is all to say .... two weeks passed and I'd forgotten about "Mr. Deffanately."

Then, last Wednesday night, I got a text message from him: "I thought we were gonna hang out."  I thought about it briefly, felt no desire to respond, so I didn't.

The next night, he called me at 11pm. I didn't answer the phone. I consulted with friends and asked the Twitter world for advice; the majority responded that I should continue to ignore him if I wasn't interested. And then he texted me again: "Whats up?"

I quickly typed, "Please don't call or text me again. Thank you."

His response: "I'm sorry... I thought you wanted to hear from me... Won't do it again."

Thank goodness, I thought.

Then my phone buzzed again: "Why the hell did you give me your card then?!"

I sighed and wondered the same thing. I clearly need a screening process.