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So I was at the gym yesterday.

I had just hopped onto the treadmill and was warming up when I looked down. A little blond girl was looking up at me solemnly.

“You’re still going to be lonely,” She said to me.

Me in ten more years: Ronery and sadry arone.

Which kind of weirded me out. It freaked me out quite a bit, actually. That’s a strange thing for a ten year old girl to strike up a conversation with.

Then, I started to piece it all together.

Whenever I work a job that has any time worked into the lesson where the students have an opportunity to talk to me, I invariably have the following conversation:

First, someone asks me how old I am. I tell them that I am 29, which is roughly one million years old to anyone under the age of 18. Then, someone wants to know if I’m married. When they find out that I’m not, they want to know if I have a girlfriend. When I tell them no, they get confused and a little bit pissed off at me.

Like I said, I have this conversation at least twice a month, so I have trouble remembering it every time that it happens.

Side Note: they have a similar reaction when I tell them that I gave up video games for a year without being forced and that I plan on going car-less for the next few years. It makes sense, I guess; when you’re in middle school, nothing is cooler than video games, cars and tits. The idea that I would give up two of those things by choice when I have access to them probably does seem kind of stupid. If I were starving and someone I knew had a pizza but was choosing to eat their own shit instead, I would probably be confused and pissed off, too.

Back to the little girl that wanted me to know that I would still be lonely. I spent a few stunned seconds trying to figure out what the fuck was going on, until I remembered who she was and what the hell she was talking about.

A few weeks ago, I was working in a class that had a free day. While we were watching Enchanted (Which is not a bad movie the first six times that you watch the first hour of it, although it gets a little stale after that), a few of the kids, including the girl at the gym had the conversation with me that I described above. They told me that I had to get on that shit before I got any older, or I would die alone in an apartment with a bunch of cats. They suggested I get a dog, start hitting the clubs and start an e-harmony account. I’ve worked there since then, and whenever they see me, they want to know if I’ve gotten a dog yet. They even claim that they made an e-harmony account for me, which makes me wonder:

A. What does an e-harmony profile of me written by an 11 year old girl look like? I imagine a lot of sparkling animated GIFs and pictures of ponies, which is actually probably what I would put, so well played. Also,

B. What kind of woman does a profile like that attract? My guess is “Terrifying ones”.

Anyway,

After finally realizing that the random 11 year old talking to me while I was on the treadmill was the same one who wanted me to start using an Internet dating service before I ended up alone and unloved, I smiled and chatted with her for a few minutes before getting on with my workout.

I didn’t think much of it until about a week ago.

One of my friends has been surfing the Internet looking at personal ads lately.

As I’m typing this, I’m realizing that it doesn’t sound very plausible. In fact, it sounds suspiciously like I’m the one perusing the personals, but I’m trying to make it sound like someone else is in order to save face, as in “Doctor, I have this friend that thinks he might have contracted an STD, but he’s afraid to go to the clinic so I’m coming in for him to see what kind of treatments are available for the rash on my penis.”

Fine. Whatever. Let’s just save some time here and say that I was the one looking at personal ads on the Internet.

Anyway, I was telling me a few nights ago that there is no shortage of loony girls on the Internet. After having a few conversations with myself about this, I had piqued my curiosity on the subject.

I’ve gotten conflicting reports on the effectiveness of Internet dating.

One of my old roommates has had quite a bit of success with it. He’s had two serious girlfriends that he met on the Internet, and he’s recently started using e-harmony with quite a bit of success. Every time I talk to him, he’s met a couple of new girls that he’s juggling.

Oh, Fiona. If only my girlfriends would try to make me understand their point of view with hot pictures of you instead of your fucking song lyrics.

Much like my frien…myself, I mean, my one experience with it has been bad. When I was 15, I met a girl over the Internet, which sucked. I’m sure that Internet dating has changed a lot in the last 15 years, but seriously. If you wake up tomorrow and it’s 1995, stay the hell away from the Internet. Put on some ripped up jeans and a Pearl Jam shirt, toss on a Nirvana album and be like “O.J. Simpson – what the fuck!?”

Trust me. I still pull a lot of tail with that strategy.

P.S.: No, I don’t.

Now that I think about it, I guess I did date another girl I met on the Internet, but it wasn’t through a site, she just liked my blog. As I’m sure you know, that turned out to be a disaster that no amount of Sex in the City episodes or Fiona Apple lyrics could ever help me understand.

Either way, I think I’m going to do a little bit of research on this topic. Is Internet dating a bunch or random hook ups like it appears to be for my old roommate? A gigantic pool of crazy, angry women as I described to myself? Or somewhere in between?

I’ll relay my findings.

Expect a report soon.