With five undisciplined kids under the age of fourteen presiding over the household I thought it was improbable I would ever manage to strike up any type of romantic liaison for a long time.
Boredom after yet another Saturday night sitting alone motivated me to enlist on one of the many internet dating sites.
I didn’t want to actually meet anyone in the flesh mind you, merely someone who lived in another town with whom I could engage in some adult conversation with on lonely nights.
Using a fake name, falsifying my age, setting up a phony email account, failing to reveal the presence of any children in my life and using the most outrageously flattering photograph I could find, I joined the site and hoped I would meet a decent, sincere, truthful and normal man.
There were plenty of the anticipated creeps on the site with names like “Sir Fukalot” and “Rotten_crotch69”, but I ploughed on through the profiles, and serendipitously found ‘Scotto’ on the first night.
We began emailing each other and during our correspondence he let it be known that he worked at a particular southern newspaper.
Not wanting to be deceived by someone using a bogus identity I applied my detective expertise and engaged a journalist friend at the local rag in my home town to do a background check on him. He came up clean.
About two months later I flew down to Brisvegas with a girlfriend, Babette (acting as a safety net) and we met up with Scotto at what we later found out was a gay bar. Not that there’s anything wrong with that but it meant slim pickings for Babette.
When Scotto and I had been emailing each other I had admitted to being the mother of one child only, Lulu (eight years old). Scotto had a three year old daughter so it seemed we had so much in common.
On our first meeting I cagily confessed to also having two boys, Padraic (nine years) and Hagar (eleven years). I had to be very vigilant with numbers because at this stage poor Scotto was still under the impression that I was seven years younger than my actual age and I didn’t want to tangle myself up in my own delicate web of deceit.
That was fine with him and we parted at the airport as only star struck lovers can, promising to email each other every night.
On the plane trip back I was suddenly riddled with guilt at my heinous duplicity. Imagine lying to this lovely man who thought he’d cracked on to a youthful thirty-seven year old with a mere three young children.
I rushed upstairs as soon as I got home, logged on and began,
“My Dear Scotto,
I have a dreadful confession to make…blah, blah, blah.”
Anyway he forgave me, transferred up here after a few months and we were married two years later.
Poor bastard.
“My Dear Scotto,
I have a dreadful confession to make…blah, blah, blah.”
Anyway he forgave me, transferred up here after a few months and we were married two years later.
Poor bastard.
