Reader Matches Personals Rant

I'm sitting at the computer minding my own business this afternoon reading the Chicago Reader online. Suddenly I realize that the face enticing me to "Meet Me" through the Chicago Reader Matches (i.e. online personals) pop up ad on the right margin is someone I actually know.

So, I click on the ad which takes me to a profile for "Shaza"--not her real name, but clearly her Reader Match nom de jour. I read how she's "divorced" which is really Reader Match speak for "still married but my husband, the loser "artist" who owes everyone money, has skipped the country leaving me to care for our child while he's apparently taken up with some female squatter in London."

I won't bore you with all the sordid details of her online dating profile, but it does go on to say how "Shaza" is looking for friends with benefits, enjoys sex, plays the base and is a drug user ("depending on which kind"). How bohemian of her!

Honestly, I'm not sure why I should even care about any of this or why I find myself so annoyed by it. I think it's because I have known this person since she was a new and newly married young mom of twenty. She and her husband the artist were friends of ours who both, in the long run, proved to be much better at the taking rather than giving part of the the friendship equation.

We've helped them out a LOT over the years including lending them several hundred dollars to keep their electricity on one winter. It's money that we will most assuredly never see again. But, it seems that they are both so busy with their lives (scouting out dates online and all that), that we seldom hear from them unless they need something.

I hit my limit with "Shaza" last summer when she and the artist finally separated and Craze and I helped her move. We, like the idiots we are, were the ONLY people to show up to her filthy disaster of an apartment where she hadn't really even packed anything prior to our arrival. We filled our cars with furniture and clothes and other assorted dirty crap and drove it to her new place, charmingly, a third-floor walk up. Poor Craze bore the brunt of carrying everything up those hot, un-air conditioned stairs. We worked for hours that night in that hot, airless apartment. Our reward? We've basically hardly heard from "Shaza" since then.

I get that when people are young that they are foolish and often selfish. What I find irritating is knowing people for eight years during which time that foolish, selfish behavior doesn't change--even when there's a kid involved. A kid who deserves stability and two parents who are less lazy (i.e actually try to get and hold down jobs like the rest of us) and self-involved.

And I think that's why their lives irritate me so much. I keep thinking of their little girl who I've known since she was just a few weeks old. I am sorry her parents can't be more responsible. I'm sorry that that child has to be raised by people who often seem equally childish.

Well, I hope "Shaza" finds a nice new friend online. The next time she needs a moving crew, she can call them for help.