You’re sitting at a café when a stranger approaches you. This person asks what your name is, and, for some reason, you reply. The stranger nods, “I’ve been looking for you.” What happens next?
I respond with my best impersonation of Robert De Niro’s character in the movie Taxi Driver, “are you talking to me”?
My response forces the stranger into a perplexed look, and she slowly begins to explain that I looked like a Steven Harden, who she has corresponded with on an online dating service.
I began to move the book I was reading towards me, I search the café to see if anyone else was with her as I contemplated my escape.
I responded with my best-perplexed look and stated, I’m not that guy. She apologized for the mistake and began walking towards the exit door of the café. I hurriedly packed away my laptop and the book I was reading into my book bag and walked briskly out the café to my car. As I backed out of the parking space, I noticed she was standing in front of the building as I drove away.
When I turn into the roadway, I thought about the photo she posted online was so strikingly different from the woman standing before me in the café. The online photo was a woman in her early twenties, but the woman who stood before me in the café was at least thirty-five years of age or more.
I recognized I panicked and began to feel guilty, so I return to the café and found her standing in front of the building as I parked. When I exited my car she recognized me, and I wave to her, and she walked towards me.
I was so nervous as she approaches, that I blurted out, “I apologize your online photo was so different.” Her shoulders slumped, she began to cry and apologizing for posting the younger picture. I felt so bad, I ran to my car to get some tissues as she tried to explain between tears and sobbing.
I asked for her to sit with me at one of the outside tables as she began to explain how she was not comfortable with using the photo that her girl friends talked her into using. I apologized for not telling her who I was and we reentered the café for coffee and great conversation.
That how I met my fiancée.
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