On New Year’s Eve, after seeing Big Fish, E.S. and I went to dinner at Ollie’s, a Chinese restaurant that, though it offers mediocre food and bad ambience, had the virtue of being across the street from the movie theater on a cold night. On my right and E.S.’s left sat an enthusiastic heterosexual couple in town from Westchester to ring in the New Year. On my left and E.S.’s right sat an old heterosexual couple. (I am almost as bad at guessing people’s ages as I am at answering the Sports and Leisure questions in Trivial Pursuit, but I’d say they were probably in their late 60s or early to mid-70s.)
In any case, E.S. and I tried to make appropriately romantic conversation, but we were defeated first by the utter lack of ambience and then by the increasingly fascinating conversation of the old couple on my left and his right. He was saying things like, “But don’t you want somebody to come home to?” and she was saying things like, “I had that for forty years, I don’t need it anymore.” Then they went on to Viagra.
Then it hit us: they were on their first date.
They were on their first date and they had met online.
God bless the internet.
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