Over the years my family’s Christmas gift giving habits have grown quite predictable. Each year I give each of my sisters a gift card to Macy’s and they each give me a gift card to Home Depot. These are fine, functional gifts, but Christmas morning is certainly not the exciting, suspenseful affair it could be. That’s why this Christmas I was determined to get my sisters something unique and unexpected. I decided to find each of them a husband.
I’m not sure how this even remotely seemed like a good idea to me, and my partner was horrified by the mere concept. You see, even though my sisters have been widowed for 7 and 8 years respectively, neither has ever expressed a desire for another husband, and the few times the topic has come up they have been adamantly opposed to the idea.
“Husbands expect you to cook,” said my middle sister indignantly, and I remembered that she disconnected her oven soon after her husband passed away. My older sister nodded in agreement saying, “Besides, husband in our age group just want someone to take care of them.” She shuddered slightly; she played nurse for many years to her sick husband and our elderly mother and her nursing days are over.
I ignored all of this, and without telling either sister, I took out personal ads for them on a popular matchmaking website. I wrote their profiles, photo-shopped their pictures and waited for the responses.
I was delighted with the number of replies, but my delight lasted only until I started reading the responses: if the men who answered the personal ads are an indication of the available middle-aged men residing in zip code 33308, my sisters will be single for a long time.
One of the first responses was from Jon who at 5’6 and 315 pounds described himself as having an “average build,” which may be true for an adolescent grizzly bear, but not for a human adult. But then I decided to cut Jon some slack because his options to describe himself were limited to “athletic, muscular, average or big-boned, ” (As opposed to “rotund, porcine, corpulent or shipping hazard.”)
Ed wanted an ”old-fashioned gal” who was not into all “this independence nonsense” and Joe was looking for “a soul mate to share long walks in the woods who was also a good cook.” Bob’s idea of “romance” was that Cialis commercial where a happy couple occupies adjoining bathtubs on the beach.
“Did he really mean to broadcast how carefully he pays attention to the Cialis commercials?” I asked my partner, an unwilling accomplice in this matchmaking scheme. “Besides, for real romance, shouldn’t they be in the same tub?” I asked.
“They’re probably afraid they’d break a hip if they were in the same tub,” he said.
I was enchanted by Leon, who wrote a passionate condemnation of “superficial, South Florida gold-diggers” that detailed his idea of the “ideal woman” and described how he was attracted to inner beauty. He concluded his missive with the phrase, “Please, no fatties.”
As loathsome as he was, he was a far better potential brother-in-law than Jerome who had hair like Liberace and who was looking for a wife ASAP. Jerome wrote a lengthy condemnation of “disgusting” non- traditional couples, especially those who were biracial, gay, or of different religions.
“Well, that could be awkward at Christmas dinner,” said my partner, but I was not ready to throw in the towel. “He doesn’t have to know that I’m Catholic and you’re not,” I said
And then there was Larry who said he was such a “good catch” that he wanted a health report and two years of tax returns before the first date. “I don’t date anyone who is on more than two prescription medications,” he wrote. “Or poor.”
In the end I got dozens of responses, but there was not one man who was good enough for either of my cherished sisters. I deleted both personal ads, much to my partner’s relief, and never told either sister how close they came to matrimony. Then I put the whole thing out of my mind until last week: My sister and I were at Panera when I noticed a short fat man leering at her.
“You look familiar,” he told her, a cup of coffee in one hand and a bear claw in the other. “Have we met?”