Infinite Possibility

Rosie Hardy is a seventeen year old girl who lives in England. She met her boyfriend, Aaron Space on Flickr, when they both participated in the 365 day contest. She lives in England, he in America. When I was seventeen, nothing about love seemed impossible.

This has been in my inbox for a while, and I’ve been debating whether or not to share this. It’s an excerpt from a letter written by my friend Richard Northwood, to a girl who added him on Facebook. I don’t believe he ever sent it to her, but he shared it with me after a discussion about online dating.

The Internet has changed everything about the way we socialize. Everything. I like to think I’m fairly savvy, and perceptive, but this letter still made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

I remain convinced that a person’s actions speak louder than any words they may utter, and that by perceiving people with more than your eyes and ears, you can get a fairly good read on them, if you allow yourself to hear what they are telling you.

Without further ado, Richard Northwood:

Oh hey remember this morning when you sent me that message via chat and I didn’t answer? Then you sent seven more in the next five or six minutes and I didn’t answer any of those either? I was actually sitting at my computer creeping your profile deciding how I should respond. It is kinda weird what you can find out about someone just by flipping through their profile for twenty minutes. I mean, sure the whole ‘found out his full name and added him on Facebook seven hours after he made me feel like shit in public’ thing is a bit stalker and clingy, but you should probably remove all that crap in your profile about looking for your one true love and being tired of players, and looking for your prince. Your list of favourite books and movies was priceless.

Just so you know, the next time you send me a chat message on here and ask me what I’m doing, I’m going to tell you that I am ‘super pumped because I finally found that rare SNL collection of Will Ferrell skits online’ and ‘I can’t wait to watch it’. You’re gonna say that rocks and then jokingly say ‘don’t watch it without me!’ and I’ll be like ‘what’re you doing tonite’. I mean, three of your favourite movies are Anchorman, Talledega Nights and Old School. Pretty obvious there babe. Then I’ll jokingly say something like ‘get your ass over here and watch with me then!’ and you’ll make up an excuse why you can’t and then I’ll say
its okay I don’t laugh on first dates anyhow. And you’ll type something like ‘LOL’ or if you’re as young as I think/hope you are you’ll type ‘roflmao’. That’s hot.

I’m actually gonna start the next chat with you and ask you if you know of any good books because I just finished reading (insert one of the books on your favourites list here) and you’ll flip out because that’s one of your favourite books. I figure you’ve forgotten that you even put that there two years ago when you joined FB, but even if you didn’t you already think I’m too much of an ass to bother creeping your profile, and I’m a bit out of your league and quite a bit older than you. Man if you only know the truth.

So anyhow, we’ll end up out for coffee and I’ll bring up my love of volleyball, camping, live bands, dogs and New York city (where I haven’t actually been yet, but after about thirty minutes on Google I’m feeling pretty comfortable describing as my second home). I’m only going to mention these things in passing, and then listen to you ramble on about them, which should fool you into thinking I’m a good listener. Based on what I saw in your photo albums that should work nicely, and help you to decide whether to go down on me at the end of the date, which actually might not be half bad since I don’t see anything about religion in your
profile.

Okay so after that I’m not going to call you for like five days and I don’t plan to return any of your texts. When I actually get a hold of you I’m going to pretend like I wasn’t ignoring you. I figure five days is just long enough to make you worry but not so long as to scare you away and have you put something about regret in one of your status updates. Its a bit of a risky proposition because you’ll complain about me to a couple of your friends (and I’d really like to fuck a couple of ’em) but I’m going to go down on you for a really long time so that should fix that.

Dude, its so weird that like 70% of your photo albums are titled ‘girls night out’ something or other. I mean how bad was your heart broken? Its all like girl power this and who needs boys tonight!, geez. Relax a little. This is just sex, or is going to be by the way. Its not even going to be very good I bet, you’re such a prude. I saw your halloween album, that wasn’t sexy it was embarrassing. And that didn’t even look like a whip. Maybe next time instead of running out to party packagers the day-of you can try having a sense of adventure and a modicum or originality?

You know what, just forget the whole thing. I’ve seen all I need to see of you from Facebook. The sex is going to be terrible, I feel like we’ve already had it. Man I’m glad I didn’t answer your chat forty five minutes ago, you’re exactly what I thought you were. Just forget this ever happened. And don’t go saying shit about me either, I never promised you anything. And it was like two dates, tops. You know I just got out of a relationship like two years ago. You were the one that came on too strong.

Next time I see you I expect you to thank me for saving you the heartache.

Yours truly and thusly,

RN

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