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From Anna Groskin, Assistant Editor:

Getting a job at Tripod has had far reaching effects.
It has caused things to happen that you would not believe.

I got my mom a date (now four and counting). Well, in a long, slightly circuitous way...

Here's the story. I'll make it short. The names have been changed to protect the innocent.

I got a job at an Internet company. My mom rarely used computers, but I convinced her to get e-mail and Web access, promising lots of chatting, all on the boss' time. It took a lot of pestering — my mom likes being on the information dirt road. Makes sense. She lives in rural Vermont.

So here I am. A single, recent college grad, living in a town with one decent bar. Not much opportunity to meet people. Not that there are a whole lot of people to meet. My mom now feels my pain. Recently divorced, she is living in a small town too. Just about everyone her age is married and settled down, cozy with their Volvos and Polarfleece, while my mom sits, now typing away at her computer, chilly because the heater is downstairs.

My mom has been on the Internet for about a month and a half now, and she has already had dates with four guys she's met online. It's a little scary. I do consider myself damn open-minded when it comes to most things. I am not scared that my mom will become a computer geek (I like geeks), and communicate only with her cyber-friends. I think I fear for her safety. There are frightening people out there, and some of them have Web access.

Her first "date" was minimally successful. They met at Barnes and Noble. My mom told him she'd be wearing a purple scarf. She cased the joint, decided there were no serious freaks, and donned the purple scarf. He found her. She said he looked like Quasimodo, and he gazed at her like she was Esmerelda. He must have been in the bathroom when she checked out the place. She had a small (read: fast) coffee. My mom must have thought that it could only get better. The funny thing is, it has.

She's "met" a sundry assortment of characters: an art dealer from NYC; a National Geographic photographer; a guy who looks like an actor on NYPD Blue (well... Dennis Franz, not Jimmy Smits); and now she's "dating" a man who seems pretty normal — he's divorced, has a kid, and is about 50. She seems happy. Really happy.

I called to check on my mom last week. She said she was busy — someone was over for dinner. I asked who; she said I didn't know him. I know just about everyone in town, so I asked where this guy was from. "The Internet," she said. "Oh... Geez Ma, be careful!!" She whispered a few details to me while he took a trip to the bathroom, and then she said she had to go. So she'd chosen to spend the evening with a random guy rather than talk to me... I felt so abandoned! I smiled as I hung up the phone.

I followed it up with an e-mail the next day, asking how had gone dinner. "Dinner? We never got to it!" I didn't need to know that much, but I'll take it. (I'd rather that than nada.) After the shock had worn off, I read on. She said that he was really kind. "He has, like the song says, a 'Golden Heart,'" she wrote. That's just what my mom deserves. She has raised four rowdy kids, and now it's her turn to play and enjoy herself. So, I guess I think it's OK for my mom to be meeting people online, but it doesn't mean I'm about to.

—Anna G. (12/31/98)

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Read more "Letters from Tripod" in the archive.

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