No, online dating is not ‘how I met your mother'

“Did you meet mom on an online dating website?”

What!? She asked it. I’m not sure why, but she did. And then she immediately started to giggle as if it were the funniest thing in the world.

Had online dating been a thing when I was young and single, I might have been quite the catch. Maybe not.

I came from one of the last dark times on earth just before the proliferation of social media, before catfishing became a thing, before a person could hide behind keystrokes and Photoshop, a time before selfies were taken from complimentary angles in which necks become thinner, lips fuller and front butts and beer guts a thing of legend.

I came from the pre-digital dawning of trumped-up online profiles and resumes of gently massaged truths where tripping over a curb and landing on your face can be spun into scaling Mount Kilimanjaro and then hang-gliding to a studly-soft landing, or playing air guitar in your undies was kinda like being a DIY indie artist on your own label.

Did I mention my abs of steel, my MFA in creative writing, the Harley Panhead I’m rebuilding in the garage or the vegan almond milk distillery I started with my tattoo artist friend from bikram yoga?

Well, I am now.

With online dating, I could have been all of this and more. Instead, I actually had to talk to girls, to be around people, to figure out new and exciting ways to insert foot in mouth and less embarrassing ways to skulk among the normal, confident populace.

Somehow, in spite of all of this, I found Priscilla, and we have so far been living happily ever after minus the normal — and often abnormal — wear and tear of a 20-plus-year relationship with someone like me.

That last line is key to this whole idea of online dating that I find so weird: someone like me.

I could imagine you’d never truly know what mixed bag you would be getting in the online dating arena. Sure, every site from Match and OKCupid, to ChristianMingle.com and FreakyDeaky.net boasts complicated algorithms meant to match potential mates along a whole list of compatible points, but really?

There is serious doubt that any algorithm in existence could be constructed for a person like me, a hodge podge of paranoia, obsessive-compulsive tendencies, rash decisions that come with loads of regret, delusions of grandeur and lots of paralyzing fears, all wrapped up in a lightning-quick temper and the emotional imbalance of a toddler. I haven’t even described my proclivity for binge TV-watching, binge-eating and binge-brooding.

What makes it more complicated is, there is a lot of good to go along with all of this not-so. I’m an enigma like anyone else, only prone to more swinging extremes than most.

If for some reason I did end up back on the market at my advanced chronological age and stunted emotional age, the results could be both awesome, initially, and so very very bad, long term.

A guy like me is quite skilled in the art of deception and manipulation, capable of tenderly written words that fall baby soft on the brain like a thousand caressing kisses, killer for the world of online profile composition. Then the physical me enters the picture, all 340 pounds of nervous mania, radiating hostility, with sketchy conversational skills and lots of blubber, both in the potential for tears and bouncing body mass.

So, no, dear daughter of mine, I did not meet your mom on an online dating web site. I would have strictly been considered a system error, incompatible for someone as normal, nice and sweet as she.

My profile would have been kicked out, flagged, added to a digital dating version of a terrorist no-fly list or an Ebola travel ban.

On the eHarmony surveys meant to find your perfect match, there are a whopping 400 questions; no lie. I don’t think I’ve adequately answered 400 questions Priscilla has asked of me in the two decades we’ve been an item.

I had to win my wife’s affections the old-fashioned way — make stuff up on the fly, without the aid of a rough draft or a delete button. I’ve had to be creative offline in the days before being online made it too easy to have game.

And every day I thank my lucky stars I didn’t have to submit to any personality tests or questionnaires to get a date with her, because I wouldn’t have these wonderful kids, this wonderful wife and this wonderful life.

Score one for this guy, and score one for old-school social interaction, as weird and messy as it can often be.

This column first appeared in the Imperial Valley Press, Oct. 24, 2014.