🚀 go-pugleaf

My experience with personal ads.

A few months ago, my next door neighbor came over to my apartment to
use my telephone to call "Metro" personal ads, as her phone bill was
getting too high from repeated calls (we have a rather unique
friendship). She proceeded to make 8 calls to ads and left messages
at probably 4 of them. She then attempted to convince me to call one
of the personal ads, and I agreed. I was unable to find a listing
that held my interest, and tried to back out. My neighbor wouldn't
let me off the hook, so I agreed to put in my own ad.

We started writing the thing, and I quickly lost control of the
process. My ideas and theories were apparently not as good as those
of my neighbor(she said so herself), and she finished writing the
ad. As the entire cost to me was $11, I figured, what the heck.
(They recoup the costs from the respondees).

During the next week or so, my neighbor became a little testy,
as no one called her back. I decided, at seeing her discomfort,
that I would at least respond to anyone who called, no matter how
unlikely they sounded.

About a week and a half later, I received my instructions on how to
use  their anonymous v-mail box. I was more than a little surprised
to fond that there really were no hidden costs involved. I wrote
and recorded a message( only about 20 takes to get it to sound the
way I wanted it to-- then another 10 to get it to sound the way my
neighbor wanted it to.  <:-}

I was somewhat aghast went I saw the finished copy of the ad in the
Metro as it had gone through some unauthorized post production
(my neighbor-not the Metro.)

I sat back and waited for my call to flood in (intentional use of
the singular).  She did not exactly match my print ad-thank Darwin,
and she didn't sound to sure about my ad or my v-mail message,
but we got together and have been amusing the hell out of each other
ever since. (Time to u-key ba.singles?-maybe not quite yet).

To the heart of the matter- while writing my v-mail message I
spent as great deal of time considering how to approach the
problem of how to present myself. These are my opinions.

1. Describe yourself and leave the object of your desire to make
up their mind whether or not they want to meet you. If the person
who called me had listened to my somewhat boneheaded restrictions,
I would be :-(.

2. Use your message as an editor. I am very busy and didn't want a
lot of calls, so I kind of turned up the amperage on some of my
more unusual traits/behaviors. I figured that anyone who was
willing to wade through my nonsense probably would be interested
in meeting me.

3. Be accurate or even exaggerate your imperfections. It is better
to have someone be pleasantly surprised that you are not as bad as
they feared than have them shocked at your less than show-case
body/brain/car/job etc. Additionally, you might actually meet
someone who accepts you for who you are- oh noooo.  ":/)

4. Give your responder a chance. They probably spent between
$2.50-4.00 calling you, so I believe it would be a little churlish
not to at least take 'em out for coffee. What do you have to lose?

5. Go for it. Give yourself and someone else a chance.

Enough of this-btw I have no monetary, personal, or political ties
to the Metro.

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life is short, brutish, and ugly(as am I)                          |
Madness is the mother of invention.                                |
t.l. rowe                           gc.tlr@forsyth.stanford.edu    |
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