With Christmas break coming up and a good chunk of my income coming from substitute teaching (all I want for Christmas is a full time librarian position, yo), I’ve had to work a lot lately. Fortunately for me, my jobs are pretty pathetically first world. Don’t get me wrong. It takes a lot of energy to not cry after giving a technology class to a dozen elderly people, when you expected maybe half that.

The effort required however, is all cerebral and emotional. I’m patiently (and awkwardly) waiting for this woman to stop yelling at her husband for touching her iPad, not hauling oats. You see that, there? Hauling oats. That’s the first example of physical labor that came to mind, because the majority of my jobs involve sitting. This is good news, of course. My daddy climbs poles for a living and like all southern men, my brother works on oil sites. They spend all day in the freezing cold. I went outside for three minutes the other day and I felt like I was being peeled. 

Everything hurts and I’m going to die.

While the library certainly requires a significant amount of mental exertion and emotional control, I can’t really say the same for substitute teaching. Sure, the administration tells us our job is important, but at the high school level, I am a glorified babysitter. Like with any babysitting job, boundaries have to be set and many, many people don’t make it that far, but I’ve been doing this for five years. Those kids know me. They know what they can and cannot get away with, so it is a really bad day when I have to do anything beyond sit there… and that is dull. So it was, that I decided to delete some photos on my phone yesterday, starting with the screenshots folder. That’s when I realized what wonderful online dating gems I’ve screen capped over the last several months, to send to Gail and Catherine. Now, I share these with my dear (somewhat neglected, lately [promise to remedy that]) readers. While I try to be direct in my online dating encounters, I generally avoid straight rudeness unless the comment is offensive or sexual in nature. After that, it’s fair game.

He’s either got a great sense of humor… or a dungeon. Who wants to roll the dice?!?!

Awww. He came with a sermon on the dangers of… technology?

“How can you read this? There’s no pictures!”

“You wanna come home with my friend and I? He’s really into ladybugs and we share a dung-… I mean… studio.”

He had sent me a copy and pasted message of this a week or two earlier. Instead of being direct, I’d just encouraged conversation, because I thought it would be funny to waste his time, since he didn’t even bother to read my very short profile, which answered his question. When I clarified that, no, I would not be letting him lick my lady bits, he told me I was confused and should be on Christian Mingle.

The response for when “inappropriate and weird” doesn’t cut it.

“Who wants to get shankraped?!?! Anyone?”

SOMEONE had to tell him… clearly… and I felt I was really quite nice in doing so.

I… um. No.

Dude. That actually is pretty clever. I totally felt guilty for rejecting that dog. Also, if she stops responding on one dating site, it’s probably best not to track her down on another and ask why.

“You’ve made your values and deal breakers clear. I don’t think any of those things are important, but if you want to take the bait when I imply you’re close-minded for meaning them, I wouldn’t mind seeing you naked while you prove me wrong. Oh, yeah… thus.”

“I’m cheating. You up for that?”

No, really. There’s a character limit on Tinder profiles. It’s not that long and specifically mentions Jesus and love and no hookups. Also, the cut off for using the phrase “fwb” was two years ago… for me.

Dude. Fucking marry me.