How did you meet? online

Name: Aaron

Height: 5'10"

Age: 36 (this seems to be a magical age on OkCupid these days. Coincidence or dudes are lying like date #46)

Occupation: english professor

Good quotes from date:
Him: "What's the whole subculture like?" (inquiring about improv and snowboarding)

Me: "I know how to use a semi-colon; it has to be used between two independent clauses."

Him: "The fact that you have 'independent clause' in your verbal repertoire is impressive."

Why is he still single? I don't know yet. But I do know that he met his last girlfriend online.

Did he pay for the date? yes - we had one drink

Did he contact you after the date? yes, he emailed the next day asking to hang out again.

How many dates did you go on? 1 (2nd one being scheduled)

Would you recommend to a friend? I think so

Comments:

I was a little worried about meeting the Professor for the following reasons:

His emails were completely devoid of humor
He used the formal colon after my name in the salutation of EVERY email he sent. Like this - Hi ____: , or even just - Hey:
When we moved from OkCupid to Gmail communication I got his full name. I Googled. BAD idea. Discovered his Twitter feed. Read it. WORSE idea. It name-dropped every trendy restaurant in NYC and every author at every book signing, and every museum he visited. (No humor via Tweets, either)

My friends told me to cancel because this guy reads online like a pretentious twit. BUT as you know I've become more open-minded about dating, and what kind of asshole would I be if I judged someone solely on their email correspondence? A huge one. And how many times has a guy given me good email only to meet him in person and realize he's a dud who I can only assume hired a ghost writer? Too many times.

I'm glad I went out with Aaron. We talked a lot about books and world traveling and living in Brooklyn. It was one of the more cerebral conversations I've had on a date and I liked it. He was not pretentious and even cracked a few jokes.

Towards the end of the date I felt comfortable with him and asked, "I'm curious why you use colons in your email salutations. I've never seen that before." He claimed to have no recollection of doing so and then I sensed him thinking about it and thinking about it. Silence ensued.

He said he would go back and check for the colons. I sensed that this good date was going bad. My big mouth strikes again. It ended the date awkwardly, where he stood about 3 feet away from me while saying "I had fun." I didn't really believe him. Then he leaned in for a half-hearted hug.

BUT he emailed the next day and asked to meet up again. And he joked about not using any colons or semi-colons in this email. I laughed. See? You really can't judge a person by their email salutations.

Unless they use emoticons, in which case, yes, you can judge.