Sally Breslin: My Life: MY PERFECT MATCH IS A SAILING POLITICIAN?

I was working on my laptop the other day when an advertisement for a matchmaking site popped up.

“Meet other 50+ singles near you!” it said. “Search now for free!”

Photos of several men also were included in the ad, and one of them looked very familiar. In fact, I was pretty sure I’d gone to high school with the guy. Curious, I clicked on the ad to see if I could find out who he was, or at least where he was from.

The first thing the matchmaking website did was ask for my e-mail address. I gave them one I use specifically for unimportant mail. Then it proceeded to ask me questions – everything from my favorite color and how many children I have, want to have, might have and want my future date to have, to how many teeth I still have.

For each question, there was a “prefer not to answer” box that could be checked off. So I zipped through all of the seemingly endless questions by checking that box. I wasn’t the least bit interested in being matched with anyone, so I didn’t want to bother answering 500 dumb questions. I was interested only in finding out about the guy who resembled my former classmate.

Finally, after what seemed like hours, I reached the man’s profile. He was from Manchester, which was where I went to high school…but he was born 13 years after I was. That meant when I was a senior in high school, he probably was just learning his ABCs.

I didn’t think any more about the ad until the next morning. The e-mail address I’d given the matchmaking website was filled with photos of men the site declared were a “perfect” match for me!

“According to your answers on your profile,” one e-mail said, “this man is a 96-percent match for you!”

I figured that meant he hadn’t bothered to answer any of their dumb questions either, but when I read his profile, it looked as if he'd actually answered every one of them. He was a plumber from Massachusetts who loved to discuss politics and go sailing.

I wondered if that meant he liked to go sailing and discuss politics at the same time...so if you didn't agree with him he could shove you overboard to shut you up.

And sailing? If I’m in the bathtub and reach for the soap and the water ripples, I get queasy. So my time on a boat usually is spent with my head hanging over the edge. Either that, or I have to pop so much Dramamine, I end up looking like one of the zombies from the TV show The Walking Dead.

But the guy did have one point in his favor. He was a plumber. And I have a very temperamental toilet I’d love to match him up with.

The supposedly “perfect” matches for me continued to pour in, so to entertain myself, I read them. I swear that some of the guys’ photos were actual police mugshots. If they wanted to attract women, they probably shouldn’t have posed with facial expressions that made them look as if they were suffering from a severe case of constipation.

One strange thing I noticed was that every man the matchmaking service recommended for me was under 5’6” tall, and I’m 5’7”. I guess I must have sounded shorter in the answers I didn’t give.

I also noticed that the men seemed to be sensitive about their body types. On the questionnaire for their builds, they could check off one of the following: slim, average, athletic, muscular, a few pounds overweight, heavyset or overweight. Not one man, no matter how big he looked in his photo, checked off anything higher than “a few pounds overweight.” I guess if a 300-lb. man is only “a few pounds overweight,” then that would make my own body type “emaciated.”

And I couldn’t believe how many of them were wearing baseball caps in their photos. I began to suspect it was because they were bald and didn’t want the women to know they were. I mean, if they had thick, luxurious hair, why would they want to hide it under a ratty old hat?

But alas, now that I’ve had my free trial, the website wants me to actually pay for a membership so I can be matched with even more eligible bachelors.

I think I’ll pass.

Although, the man who listed one of his hobbies as collecting his bellybutton lint in a jar for the past 10 years (I’m serious!), does sound like a real catch.

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Sally Breslin is an award-winning syndicated columnist who has written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science-fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net.