urious thing, this “dating” in the digital age. It’s not so tough when you’re going out with a 35 year old who is still delighted by the novelty of booking a holiday online, or someone even older who has a blog but doesn’t actually operate it themselves. Being a child of the digital age I find this sort of techno-luddite befuddlement adorable, but pitiable.
Going out with someone my own age? Different story all together. There’s the process of Googling them, hunting down any Livejournals or blogs, Whois-ing them (its a new verb, look it up) or dirty internet secrets. The weird flipside to meeting someone “IRL” as opposed to online, is exploring that persons internet presence. Someone you really like in person might be the forum jackass that would trigger your “flame on” response.
For example, I seem a bit softer, or perhaps nicer on the web than I am in person, because the internet is forever, and anyone can see it if they really want to. That and the process of blogging and writing allows you to linger over your words, giving the process as much time as it deserves (it’s a lot harder to blow up in writing, but it can be done). A date or suitor might be shocked to discover a seemingly sweet and domestic “Anya” upon Googling me. If you post on the internet you’re blowing a lot of “secrets” and exposing yourself to your potential and curious “real life” suitors in the strangest ways.
Then there are the really thorny questions – do you break up with someone who has a repugnant blog or the creepiest friends on a networking site? Do our digital presences indicate what’s genuine in us, or what is constructed for show? I suppose the obligatory Google-ing is a new step in the modern relationship.
In my pre-knitting life the steps and milestones were different. Now when I think milestone I’m not talking about third date “rules” and whether or not your date calls you back within a certain number of days. Think about the first time you let slip that you have a hobby that could be misconstrued as a freakishly domestic activity, the first time you present a ball of wool for fondling, the first time your hands are free enough to knit and whip your project out of your bag to get a few stitches in, and the dreaded first knitted gift (when? what? why?) or explanation of the *lack* of knitted gifts…
I must confess to having an enormous aversion (or at least displaying apathy) to so those called “milestones.” I’m pretty laid back about meeting parents (though there is a system in place for meeting my relatives, for the preservation of *my* sanity), attending group functions, the baseball metaphor for sex – the whole nine yards. Running a relationship on a set societal schedule gives me the heebie jeebies, possibly because of the moral implications and emotional baggage inherent in abiding by those rules instead of just toughing it out on a person to person basis.
I can easily work with a fumbled date, a sports fan, or a weird movie selection (even a less than perfect first kiss), but as laid back as I can be, there’s just no getting around some things.
Like something as personal (to me) as say, knitting, cooking, or sewing. There’s just no getting around someone who thinks it’s too bizarre that you make your own clothes, or who eats for utilitarian purposes only and devours a carefully cooked meal like it’s a cardboard burger. There’s a fine line between a guy whose into the simpler food pleasures and a pig of a man who wouldn’t know a bowl of Kraft Mac n’ Cheese from the good stuff because he doesn’t stop long enough to savor it. The former may still love the sensuality of food under the right circumstances, the latter…well if they won’t slow down to savor food they probably won’t slow down for anything.
Could you, theoretically, date a person who was vehemently opposed to knitting? Or, for some bizarre reason, thinks it’s a bigger turnoff than mentioning their mother at an inopportune moment? I, luckily, have yet to meet such a person but rather think that they’d be on the BLOCK list faster than someone who isn’t turned off by an inopportune maternal namedrop.
Frankly, I don’t know why anyone wouldn’t want to date most knitters, what with the idea of “sexy” knitting is getting kicked around a lot these days. You see a lot of pierced “punk rock knitters” whipping things off the needles between shows, and “naughty” knitted things but that’s not why I think it ought to be classed as hot. Good knitters know texture, and the sensuality of fibers is appealing to them, and making something by hand with naught but your wits and small sticks and string is pretty ingenious don’t you think? All that sensuality and ingenuity could translate very well for a relationship. And if that wasn’t enough, most knitters have patience and ingenuity, not to mention nimble fingers.
In what world is this not hot? Plus, most parents have a very hard time thinking horrible disapproving thoughts about knitters, we can look oh so sweet and unassuming with tiny needles in hand, providing we are not secretly plotting murder most foul with a particularly sharp sock needle. In the eyes of most parents a knitting project almost counteracts the shock of oddly colored hair or visible tattoos (though I’m afraid it has no power to counteract over exposure or the F-Bomb dropped in the presence of conservative relatives).
I suspect it is not the sort of past time the uninitiated associate with a tattooed science geek so often they require proof. But out of all my hobbies I think knitting is probably the most “normal” when compared to amateur entomology and a passionate dedication to graveyard preservation.
