Flashback Friday Moment of The Week: 10/2/2020

by Just Juan
1399 views 2 min read

While watching the Dodgers thrash the Brewers in Game 2 of the National League Wild Care Series last night, I saw a commercial that threw me for a bit of a loop. It offered a service that was familiar to me but with features that were unavailable—and quite frankly, not even imaginable—back when I used it. Now, I’m left wondering if life would’ve been different had those features been available to me. Maybe…maybe not. Anyway, that brings me to this week’s moment in the Flashback Friday series: the Match.com experience.

How I first came across this moment? My history with Match.com started in April 2010…about a month before I left Tokyo to return back to the United States for the Joint Base Andrews assignment in the Air Force. While I felt somewhat good about the possibility that me and The Cocoa Goddess could go steady, I wasn’t entirely convinced that she would be on board with the 765 miles between where I would be in the National Capital Region and where she would be in Valdosta, Georgia. Signing up for Match.com was something of an insurance policy. Just writing that makes it seem kinda shallow in hindsight.

What it meant to me then? The early days of Match.com weren’t too bad. I met a few women off the site during the DC days. The site also played a major role in my love life when I left the Air Force and settled into the Opelika job. Initially, I was going to try that blind date thing Steve Harvey was doing on his morning show but one of my colleagues made me think better of that and I ended up going back to Match. Seeing Opelika and Auburn as being low on quality prospects, I cast my net as far north as Atlanta and Birmingham, as far west as Montgomery, and as far south as Pensacola and Panama City. After getting burned by one woman and getting the “you’re a great guy but…” from another, I actually struck gold on the last try. I found my wife.

What it means to me now? I haven’t been on Match.com since October 2014. When Mercedes and I went official, I closed the account. It doesn’t mean a whole lot to me now. However, if that video chat feature they promoted was available way back when, I’m absolutely sure it would be a different ballgame for me when it came to the Atlanta-area women…almost all of which were absolutely enamored by the messages and my way with words but turned off by the distance up I-85. Maybe live video chatting would’ve been an equalizer in my favor. But then again, maybe I don’t meet Mercedes if that feature is around. So I guess it is what it is.

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