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facts & arguments

Facts & Arguments is a daily personal piece submitted by readers. Have a story to tell? See our guidelines at tgam.ca/essayguide.

'No one looks good in those hats! What were you thinking?" a friend asked.

I thought I was being honest. I would send my most recent photo, which happened to be taken at Christmas dinner. Yes, I was wearing a green paper hat straight from a Christmas cracker. What would you do if you were 53, divorced and had a photo requested of you by a man you had been pleasantly texting with all afternoon?

We both had university-age kids, shared similar interests and were texting without gross grammatical errors. We shared mutual friends, which is how we were introduced in the first place. I was out for lunch with these mutual friends when I declared I needed to start dating and asked for advice. I picked up a beer coaster that read "Wild, Strong and Free" and declared it my new axiom for 2015.

My lunch partner texted his pal: "Hey man, Happy New Year. Are you single these days? My wife's good friend is, and she is Wild, Strong and Free!" An instant reply: "Yes I am. Have her text me at this number, and we can take it from there."

The truth is I am not wild, but I am strong enough, and free to date. And it was with this intro that I initiated the conversation. It was easy texting back and forth, then he sent me a photo of himself, and asked for mine. My friends described him as very handsome, but the photo was small and badly lit, apparently taken while he was making a speech at a company Christmas party. If he was handsome, I could not tell. But I felt I already had enough information to go on – I would meet him for coffee, no hesitation.

His request for a photo made our friendly interaction feel Internet-datish. What should the photo say about me? There was a professional photograph taken a few years back – softly lit and kind. There was a sweaty hiking picture from a backcountry Rockies trek this summer, another of me swimming in an ice-cold mountain lake, yet another of me holding a small red octopus while diving in Maui. Any of these could be interpreted to say I was outdoorsy, adventurous, fun.

Then I came across the photo with the green Christmas cracker crown. My smile highlights some gentle crow's feet, my teeth are straight – and my own (as are my nails and breasts). The photo, I thought, looked like me.

I pressed send and waited. My afternoon texter did not respond. Not in one hour, two hours, three. After midnight a text arrived: "Thanks for the pic." Nothing more, and nothing since.

I like my 24-year-old daughter's response: "What a dweeb." We could have had a nice conversation at a coffee shop about other catchy beer coaster slogans, or the Wildrose defection or, ouch, oil prices. We could have chatted about our kids and the cost of university, or Benedict Cumberbatch, or where we've gone out to eat lately, and left it at that. But based on a photo, I was discarded before he heard my voice or my opinions or my laugh. One green paper hat and I was dismissed like the left-swipe of Tinder, the mobile app that lets you see who is in your vicinity, kind of like the World Wide Web bar-around-the-block.

The friend that introduced us via text admitted he had never seen Dweeb out with anyone who had not been much younger, and blonde. I am new at dating, and on the surface I laugh it off, but underneath I recognize an age-old double standard of age disparity.

Younger (and blonde) is of course metonymy for fun-loving, energetic and not your wife. My ex-husband is dating a marathon runner 16 years his junior (and blonde). A good friend's brother, at the age of 60, is 11 years older than the woman he is dating. A friend's father is in his 80s and dating a 47-year-old babe. Does he have money, I ask her. No, but he acts as if he does. We both laugh.

Are these gals doing the math? Time marches on, prostates enlarge, hair greys and minds dull. If this is my new computed reality, am I to be searching the 60-plus demographic? I would like to find someone of my own vintage to age gracefully with, side by side. It would make it much easier to reminisce about Doug and the Slugs.

I regularly visit a yoga studio, and although there is an even number of guys to gals, there have been no love interests. I am a full-time university student. Friends poke a ribald elbow to the rib and crack Mrs. Robinson jokes. Hilarious, I say, and remind them my male classmates are the same age as their own sons. I play tennis and meet many women, and many couples. My friends are all couples – marrieds, I call them. They tell me the single men they know are divorced, and divorced for a reason.

That leaves online dating. I have a single-woman friend who decided to go all out and date hard and fast – 52 dates in a year. A low point was at a ballet when she found herself seated in a circle of men she had been out with in the past few months. Calgary is a big city but a small town, so no thanks. Speed dating, lunch dating, singles nights – conceptually, I prefer the introduced-by-mutual-friend idea. I still believe a personal recommendation should go a long way.

If asked again, I will use the same photo of me in the green paper crown. But I think I'll don a Wild, Strong and Free T-shirt, and hand the picture over in person.

Donna Williams lives in Calgary.

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