When You Get to Meet Cupid in Person

An article I read in another paper recently about cyber dating actually inspired today’s blog.

Years ago, I got to meet Cupid in the flesh, except for the fact that the little guy with the chuberic face, feathered wings and bow and arrows that effect the heart, had taken on the guise of a lovely girl name Carole.

When I was younger, my dad owned a gas station where I worked part time many weeknights. I was fortunate to get my drivers license at an early age, have a car and some money too. In addition to working at the gas station, I also worked part time, on weekends, with my partner at the Glenwood Indoor Flea Market, also working there was a true charmer, name Carole. After a few months of doing business there, Carole started dating my best friend and partner. I was 17, they were a bit younger.

Soon it became apparent that I would drive the three of us around constantly, especially after work on weekends, like a chauffeur, unless I had a date too. We’d go to a club, bowling, to dinner, play pool and just hang out.  However, double dating was tough on a new girl as she would have to get to know me as well as get along with Carole and my business partner/best friend too.

After a few failed attempts at double dating, around Valentine’s Day Carole started telling me about her friend Loraine. Carole had known Loraine since kindergarten, they were the same age and, like Millionaire Matchmaker’s- Patti Stanger, my Cupid said Loraine would be perfect for me. Finally, at the end of March, we set up a double date for a few days away. Pulling this off, however, was not without its difficulties. No sooner did we make the double date and finalize the intricate details when my partner, and Carole’s steady, came down with a case of acute appendicitis which was in no way cute, especially to Loraine, who turned down two other suitors to meet me on this double get-together.

After the news, both Loraine and I decided that this was not going to work out. Instead Carole went it Hyper-Cupid mode, with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men and women, and decided that the date would still happen, in a strange modified form. Carole was unrelenting, so eventually we both caved in.

Our date was rough at first. Loraine was an angel and I felt like an unrefined schlub (A Yiddish word – that is not a compliment). Where Carole was extroverted, Loraine was a refined introvert. Where many girls I was attracted to at that time were non-religious party girls, Loraine was a prior yeshiva attendee, although now in a public high school, very cultured, supremely intelligent and truly responsible. My saving grace was that after dinner on this first meeting Loraine and I parked in front of her house, just us two and talked and joked for hours and hours. Despite us being complete and utter polar opposites in upbringing and personalities, Loraine understood me. The real, deep down me. Our first Passover together, a few weeks later, is one for the history books that we still joke about.   

She was and is the Ying to my Yang. The sweet, sticky jelly to my tangy, gooey peanut butter. A great match. To say she would and does “complete me” would be cliché, but oh so true. Somehow Carole/Cupid knew this.

The end of March will mark the 35th Anniversary of Loraine and my first date. We’ll celebrate 30 years of marriage in early June. And it is Valentine’s Day each year that prompts me to thank my personal Cupid for what she did. To think of all the great times that I would have missed had I not listened to Carole’s crazy first date plan and agree to trust her and proceed.

Loraine and my lives have had its ups and downs, like any long-term couple, but mainly some great ups over the years. Fantastic and exciting vacations, the birth of our son, great pets, a beautiful home, fabulous careers, the guardianship of our other son, which might never have been realized. We have grown immensely as a couple over the years.

Nowadays most post their dating status on the net, apply for match ups on mathematically computed dating sites based on compatibility, where positives attract and negatives repel. They sign up online for speed dating as if it were some game show contest with a time limit. They allow zeros and ones to interlock fates and futures and do not take into account the things that can’t be defined or described. Love may be blind, and deaf and mute and have no sense of smell too. But true love is the greatest gift of all and all I can say is “Thank you to my personal Cupid!"