Personal Ads

Did you ever wonder about the things you read in personals ads? Oh, right, you don't read them. You're too cool, I know. Well, you probably looked at them once, trying to get your friend a date. Uh huh.

Anyway, I do read them. I keep hoping for that one special ad: "Mountain man with full buckskins and cabin deep in the woods, looking to trap a furry critter for winter hibernation." Of course, personal ads rely more heavily these days on telephone voice mail than paper mail, so the mountain man of my dreams has to run a phone line to that lonely cabin in the woods before he places an ad. That's a high cost of entry, I guess.

But I digress. If nothing else the ads can be funny--sometimes intentionally so, and those are some of my favorites. They're also interesting. I like to analyze them sometimes. If you've seen a reasonable number of ads, you'll recognize some standard phrases that border on if not fall right over the cliff into cliché-dom:

• WPTH: that is, Weight Proportionate to Height. We need to bring the mathematicians in on this one. I mean, what is the proper proprotion? I have one height and one weight--1:1. Is that good? What is the formula for this? Does anyone have time to convert height to inches and figure out a pounds-per-inch ratio? Too much work for me....
• Straight a/a: This one puzzles me. I mean, I can't help but think I'll get 20 minutes of sex and then he'll roll over and go to sleep-- then wake up in the morning and turn on the football game. And remember, I live in Detroit, so even if I liked football in general, the Lions aren't best team to watch ordinarily.
• Not into bar scene: Not since that ugly incident at Backstage in 1993... how dare she wear the same shorts I was anyway....
• No fems: So now I'm thinking, "gee, there was that time I was singing show tunes in falsetto in the Eagle with Jeremy, did that count?"
• No fats: I want to see the ad that reads "GWM seeking fats to fem out with at the bar...."
• Looking for same: Because when I woke up this morning and looked in the mirror, nothing was there. And I know I'm not a vampire.
• Herb friendly: My favorites are oregano and basil.
• Lonely: That's a great marketing tactic: "Call me because no one else is calling me." Um, I don't mean to be mean, but I wouldn't want to advertise the fact that I can't get a date, even if the reason I'm putting an ad in the paper is that I'm trying to get a date.
• Discretion assured: Because you definitely don't want to be seen in public with me.
• Looking for LTR: Did you look under the couch? I lose my LighTeR under there often.

At least those are my interpretations. Your mileage may vary. It's all theoretical, because they're always looking for someone else, usually someone older unless you're older, then it's someone younger. My favorite is when I see an ad I like, then at the end the guy is looking for someone from a different race than I belong to. "But wait, I can play Asian, really I can...."

Ok, maybe I'm not cut out for this personal ad thing. But I keep reading, because you never can tell. It gets lonely up in those mountains, and maybe Grizzly Adams is tired of Ben and wants a new furry critter in his life. Then all those years of wading through the ads will finally pay off.

—Charlie Songdog
September 11, 1997