silverbuggy & kyzen: Part 1

Spring 2002. My best friend in college was prepping for her move to New York by networking on lavalife.com. One night she excitedly told me to check out the profile of this cutie from NYC. I found myself signing up for an account, cropping a profile picture, and writing some sweet words in search of my own prince charming. There were 4 guys that I met online.

Lavalife subway poster:

1 was from Boston, NOT cute at all, but potentially a normal friend. I invited him to karaoke with friends but ended up ignoring him all night. Turned out he looked much older than his profile pic and honestly creeped me out a bit. I still feel bad about that.

Guy 2 was from Toronto. He had glasses, was the artsy type, kind of mysterious and intriguing. I still remember his name was Wayne. We chatted a bit on and off, but nothing ever came out of it.

#3 was a PHD from Stanford. He was a bit boring and his English wasn't that good. So that was that.

And then there was kyzen8, the doctor-to-be from Atlanta. The thing that struck me about him is that he was nerdy enough to actually *get* the puzzle on my profile. Well, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out, but still it was touching. Because lavalife did not allow personal information in profiles, I had to be sneaky to pass their review. Here's what the last sentence of my profile said:

let's see if this will pass the review: if you piece vivi and lee and my favorite number 18 together...you'll have a screen blahblah name for something which i'm not allowed to say...

Soon after our initial contact on lavalife, kyzen8 figured it out and messaged me on AIM. +1 for that move! The second thing he had going for him was that he was in med school. Since I went to MIT and was surrounded by computer geeks, I didn't know anybody studying to be a doctor. So that was pretty cool. But he was from middle-of-nowhere Atlanta, which I embarrassingly kept forgetting and having to ask him where he's from again. That, and he didn't have a profile picture!! I wouldn't call myself shallow, but no profile picture = not interested in talking to you.

In the spring and summer of 2002, he initiated IM conversations maybe 2-3 times, but each conversation dwindled into nothing...

Run, kyzen8, run!