Let.The.Horse.Pull.The.Cart.Molly.

One guy's profile on Tinder read, "Let’s just tell people we met in line at a coffee shop, and I said something charming."

Because (forgive me if you did) who wants to say, We met online.

My dad met his fiancé online. My mom met her boyfriend online. My coworker is happily married to a man she met online. To name a few. 

So, what’s the big deal? Will this stigma end? Is it a stigma, or is it just me and my highfalutin ideas of how people should act and meet and love?...

So, how did me and the 25-year old meet? Well, according to my highfalutin idea that I would “meet someone on the way to meeting myself,” in fact. Amazingly.

We met at the Theater Bay Area auditions last Sunday. He was an auditor (i.e. some kind of representative of a theater company who watched all the auditions--casting director, director, who knew), I was a volunteer.

We repeatedly caught one another’s eye during the day, but the day passed without a word and was ending. I didn’t want to let the opportunity to meet him pass by, because either he’s someone in the theater world I’d like to meet, or he’s just a cute boy I’d like to meet.

Everyone milled in the lobby at day’s end, and I simply walked up to him and said, “Hi, We’ve been glancing at one another all day, and I just wanted to introduce myself.” He replied that it was the red I was wearing that caught his eye. And, that I was very beautiful.

We chatted, we laughed a little, and in the end, I gave him my card, utterly ambiguous to either of us whether our intentions were personal or professional.

Then, his email later in the week, and the ambiguous Saturday afternoon meeting that turned into half a date. And last night into a full one. 

His beard hid the fact he’s 7 years younger than me, could have been anywhere around 30, til I asked on Saturday outright.

The agony I poured into my friends' text messages yesterday morning about the age gap! "He was in diapers when the Challenger blew up." "He doesn't know Corey Feldman before rehab." "He didn't suffer neon like the rest of us." Though born in the 80s, his earliest memories begin in the 90s. This is a Millenial. 

My friends' resounding response was: Just go on a second date, doofus.

You don’t even know if you like one another yet; stop manufacturing reasons to make this a no.

One friend in particular had good insight about the generational gap. About the desire for aligned frames of childhood reference. Her husband is from Germany, arrived in the States in 1995. His American pop-culture references only go back that far, even though he’s of similar age. She said she walks down memory lane with her friends. And that’s enough.

What are the need to haves; what are the nice to haves?

What about the "He's employed, attractive, intelligent, ambitious, Jewish, tall" part of the equation?

Then again. Your 20s are so much different than your 30s or any other years (that I’ve lived so far). There is a certainty about the world and your place in it that you have in your 20s that completely shifts by your 30s. There is a hubris about your knowledge. The development of those few years is drastic. I know. I’ve lived it, and watch others live it. I know that people who are 40 look at me and how I think I fit in the world, and smile good-naturedly at my naïveté.

Though, perhaps it’s my own hubris that I can know where another person is on their developmental path.

There is no definite here, there’s only exploration. More opening, more meeting, more laughing and softening. The part where you (I) feel comfortable enough to be silly--if that part even comes to pass. You can’t even know yet if you like one another, and so all the questions about how you met, about generational alignment, about maturity and Back to the Future references AREN’T EVEN RELEVANT yet.

For now, I, said doofus, went on the second date. And this one was unambiguous.