COLUMN: Personalize your life
This is my first public admission of this – I often read personal ads.
I suspect I’m not the only one any more than I’m the only one who lies to their dentist about how much they floss. Like job openings listed in the Wall Street Journal, I never respond to them, but I read them all the same.
I’m not sure I measure up. They are the dollar Idaho lottery ticket, the $2 bet at Wyoming Downs and the quarter in the Wendover slot machine. They offer high hopes at low cost – and on another cold night in Utah just the promise of obscene riches and happiness is comforting to me.
Even when I’m madly in love/involved/seeing someone/paired off/shacking up/going out with or whatever the current euphemism is, I read them. I don’t think of the people who write them as pathetic losers. I admire them for being able to condense their attributes and desires into 40 words or less.
I also read them for the same reason I read the other classifieds. Maybe, just maybe, there will be an ad for a red ’68 Mustang convertible with only 45,000 actual miles for $1,500. And I, of course, will be the first caller.
I keep thinking the ad for “the one” will be in there. This even though I said I gave up on the theory of “the one” about the same time I reluctantly accepted that, despite the FBI cover up and pictorial evidence to the contrary, Elvis is dead.
“The one” theory is that there is just one person out there with the matching UPC bar code and chromosomal double helix that will perfectly entwine with yours.
Like Elvis, “the one” is part myth and part fantasy. I try to make my fantasy one as specific and out of the realm of reality as possible. This allows me to shop without wanting to buy anything – to read without responding. When I’m bored or faced with a long drive across Wyoming I periodically add to my mental checklist to make it even more improbable of finding.
The current version is red-headed Irish Rhodes scholar dancer and heptathlete who is heiress to the Guiness Brewing fortune. Her favorite pet has to be calico-colored guinea pigs and her favorite food has to be garlic pizza with turkey sausage. Of course she has to have the height proportional to weight, warm, fun loving, blah, blah, blah attributes that are the trite prelude to all personal ads.
Much to my surprise, I haven’t found this one yet. Then again, I doubt anyone out there is waiting for the well-edited, glorified 40 word self-assessment I would write as my personal. Face it, we’re all better on paper.
Personal ads are a lot like job applications and New Year’s resolutions. It is at these three brief instances when we come within rock-throwing distance of perfection. Resolutions make you shoot for perfection. Job applications and personals don’t really leave you enough space to list imperfections.
I have read enough personal ads to know most are rather joyless and repetitive. It doesn’t matter if they are in the Christian Singles monthly or in the gender swapping back pages of New York’s Village Voice, they lack truth and imagination. The writers apparently learn nothing from the advertising that surrounds us. Try a fresh approach:
The used car approach: SWM 1956 vintage Frank, low mileage, only taken out on weekends, priced to sell, Nordic Track exterior, self-help book of the month club interior, looking for SWF 30-40 or best offer.
The ugly truth approach: What the heck, I figured my chances were about as good with this ad as with the blind dates my friends keep setting me up with.
The psychological approach: Please spend a weekend with my parents before we meet. It’ll give you an explanation for my present condition and an idea of what I’ll look like in 20 years. Think it over before you call me.
The realistic approach : Let’s not spoil the illusion. I like to write these ads, you like to read them, let’s just be pen pals.