Secret Admirer

A few months ago, right out of the blue, someone sent me one of those "You have a secret admirer!" mails.

"What the heck," I figured, "I'll give it a go. Maybe it's deleted or deleted." I went to the website, prepared to enter the addresses of likely suspects and humiliate myself totally.

When I followed the link, I was dismayed to find it wasn't anything like the original secretadmirer.com. It was some freaky college student web site that offered free voicemail, webmail, and valuable e-coupons sent right to your email address! Daily! HOORAY! And I had to become a member of the whole mess before I could go through with this stupid secret admirer thing.

So I didn't.

If I had a real goddamn secret admirer, he/she would know that I am not likely to give my NAME, RANK and SERIAL NUMBER out for some freaky commercial website to spam in perpetuity, just to find out who gave them my email address in the first place. Also, I would have had to turn Java on to use that site. I don?t turn on Java on the first date.

If I had a good stalker, he/she would probably have gone to http://www.secretadmirer.com in the first place. Or bitten the bullet and written me directly, although going through an anonymous service does show that he or she has a keen understanding of my not wanting to deal with people, particularly creepy ones.

As I told my good friend Sean: asses, if located, will be kicked.

I do feel a little bad. I wish there were some way to respond to whoever sent this and explain why I'm not showing up at his door wearing Saran Wrap and a smile. Unfortunately, there?s no way to respond to the anonymous sender. Even if I were to log into the site, I?d have to enter email addresses of people I had crushes on, who would in turn get another message like the one I originally got.

It?d be one thing if it just told me ?too bad, you didn?t enter the email of your admirer? and let it go at that. Instead, it ropes in more and more people in an ever-widening circle, as my second-choice crushes enter in the names of their beloved.

And so the unrequited love cancer spreads across mail servers into infinity. It?s kind of like a Star Trek episode, except many times more lame.