About two weeks ago, when I was filing posts on dogs I had known and the cats in my life, someone complained, politely, that dogs and cats were all very well, but what she really wanted was “to hear more about you.”

“You” meaning me.

I would think anyone who’s been hanging around this blog is finding out quite a lot about me — and not just on the “About” page. However, I’m always glad to oblige when I can.

Especially since the last time there was such a clearly expressed interest in knowing more about me was in 1997, when I was sixty-six. It was on a site called “The Silver Connection,” which probably doesn’t exist any more. [If it does, I don’t want to know about it.  Nothing good came of it, except a funny story. Which we’ll get around to sooner or later, in another post.]

But it does seem a waste of time and effort to reinvent the wheel here when there’s already a perfectly good “more about me,” out there.  After all, I’m still pretty much the same, even if it’s sixteen years later –minus a couple of inches and some stamina.  So where’s that copy of what I told Silver Connection?  It must be around the house somewhere.

[While I go look, you may be wondering whether or not I was ashamed to be wasting time with such online nonsense. A classy lady like me? I cannot tell a lie, I was. But it was a free trial.  Plus I was being ashamed all by myself;  there was no one to see. And doesn’t a girl gotta do what a girl gotta do? Even an oldish “girl?”]

Aha!  I found it!  [In a dusty red-rope folder in the basement marked “Personals.”  Am I well-organized, or what?]  The Silver Connection seems to have asked many probing short-answer and essay questions to determine if I was worth marketing. I won’t bore you with all my short answers. Here’s a sampling:

• Female
• Heterosexual
• 5’6″
• 130-135 lbs
• Full head of hair
• Big brown eyes
• Divorced
• Living alone
• All grown and living on their own
• Northeast USA
• Economy car
• Avid book reading
• Classical
• I drink socially
• I do not smoke
• I am rather fashionable
• I don’t watch television
• I am usually on time
• Professional degree
• Buy top of the line brand names
• A friend put me up to this. (Here I lied.)

However, I suspect that what the someone who wants to know more about me will find more interesting are the essay questions and my answers. (There I did not lie.)

Here goes:

Describe what you feel is your ideal relationship?

A partnership of mind, heart and body with a man who speaks my language, understands my references, shares my sense of humor, my values and my appetite for life, has considerable and broad experience of how the world works, at every level, and is interesting and fun to be with.  He will know that we both need to be private at times.  He will also be a kind and trustworthy man.  He keeps himself in good working order.  If he doesn’t exist, next best will do.

What do you find “sexy” in a mate?  

See above.

Share about your main strengths and weaknesses.

I’m a survivor.  I’m smart and well-educated, and that has helped.  I’m also funny.  (If you didn’t laugh, you’d have to cry, no?)  People say I have pizazz.  I say I’m my own creation, and it isn’t over.  I continue to be a work in progress.

I am considered attractive.  I am also a good and loyal friend.  For life.

I love life.  I may complain loudly about it at times, but I really love it, even the hard parts.  I also love people, for the most part.  Most human beings I’ve met are remarkably strong, and resilient, and courageous when you get to know them.  I love listening to people talk about themselves.  In fact, I think people’s stories, and how they’re dealing with the hand they’ve been dealt, are just about the most interesting things there are — whether in literature or in life.

Although I didn’t start out that way, over the years I’ve become quite independent — financially, professionally, intellectually and emotionally.  I’m now thought to be a success story, in a profession notably difficult for women. Younger people also think me wise about life’s difficulties, and bring me their problems, which is sweet of them, as I’m still learning.  I continue to examine my experiences for whatever they can teach me.

Despite all of the above, raising my two kids, now grown, still counts as the best thing I’ve ever done, even though we experienced adversity along the way and even though I’ve done quite a few other, somewhat “glamorous” things as well.  It continues to make me happy to think back, now and then, to how they were when they were younger, and at home with me.  I also love them a lot the way they are now.

I am kind, warm, friendly, fun to be with, honest about everything important, and also at times silly, frivolous and astonishingly youthful.  [This question certainly invites self-indulgent nattering, doesn’t it?]

My weaknesses?  Plenty.  But you’ll have to discover those for yourself!

Is there anything about you that the questionnaire didn’t cover?  (I.e., physical disabilities, illnesses, allergies, strong likes or dislikes, shoe size?)

I will not tolerate material dishonesty, gratuitous unkindness, physical abuse and/or cruelty of any kind, or people with major control issues.  But of course, I don’t know anyone like that.  And I’m sure you’re not like that either.

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And that’s all you’re going to get from me on this subject.

Back to the basement where you belong, Silver Connection!  There are other more interesting things to write and read about.

Now that I’m eighty-two.