Robin

The internet claims to know the name of my love soul mate. An obnoxious yet colorful ad with lots of glittery letters and some candy like sparkling twinkling thingies appears on my screen every time I log on to check my messages. I am annoyed by this foolish ad every time I see it, but I can't help staring at the stupid thing. I haven't actually found my own love soul mate as of yet. In the past I have had to settle for temporarily borrowing other people's love soul mates from time to time to get me by. It would be nice to finally have a love soul mate of my own. So as gaudy and intrusive as this seemingly innocent blip of multimedia inanity is, I secretly gaze at it and harbor vain fantasies of who my love soul mate might be.

The rational side of my brain tells me that it is preposterous to think that the internet might know the true name of my love soul mate. This is clearly a trap. I shouldn't even bother to ask the internet what my love soul mate's name is. That way lies Spam email and junk credit card offers that will clutter my end table. The internet can't possibly know for sure and even if it did, it would probably lie.

But...what if the internet really does know the name of my love soul mate and was genuinely interested in disclosing that information to me? You never know. It could happen. Knowing the name of my love soul mate would certainly narrow the search by a considerable degree. In fact just knowing the first letter of her first name could be pretty handy.

Despite the gnawing desire to know the name of my love soul mate, I find myself reluctant to answer that ad and ask the internet to share it's knowledge. I can't figure out exactly why I hesitate. What if I have been too jaded by the results of other false advertising gimmicks and broken promises? What if all that disappointment I have suffered in the past from other shameless promoters has made me too afraid to take the kinds of risks necessary for true internet stimulated romance? God forbid that one day in the future I run into my love soul mate at the grocery store, but don't recognize her because I was too afraid of a ridiculous marketing ploy to get her name from what could have been a very credible source? How could I let threat of a little junk email make me miss out on my one chance for true happiness in life? This is a critical juncture of my life and it's time, for good or for ill, to make a choice.

So, ignoring my instincts and all the blaring alarms of common sense sounding vigorously in my head, I choose to take the bait of this obvious trap and see just what the internet has to say about my love soul mate. It turns out that getting the name of your love soul mate from the internet is annoying. There are a bunch of forms to fill out and questions to answer and lots of pesky personal information that has to be revealed to total strangers before the question of love soul mates is even addressed.

It turns out that my love soul mate's name is Robin. Well of course it is. It couldn't be any other name. The internet told me so and the internet is wise. Her name is Robin. Where have you been all my life, Robin? I hope you aren't fat. At first I am very excited. This is going to be easy. Now that I have my love soul mate's name, all I have to do is type her name into a search and - Presto! - instant internet love soul mate gratification!

My enthusiasm hasn't lasted long. Shortly after I began the search for my beloved Robin two critical and disturbing pieces of information occur to me and the implications have left me shaken and in doubt of all that I once thought to be certain . The first is that, despite the key advantage of knowing my love soul mate's name, Robin is a fairly common name. There are a lot of people on the internet named Robin. The results for the name Robin number in the tens of thousands. So my chances of randomly happening on the right Robin are still significantly less than 0.0001%. As tantalizingly close as she may seem, she is still forever lost in the ambiguous results of an internet search engine. The second, and quite horrifying revelation is that Robin does not necessarily have to be the name of a woman. This of course leaves the distinct and frightening possibility that the internet thinks my love soul mate is a man. I find this to be most disconcerting.

So I have this proposal for you Robin, whoever you are. If you are a beautiful single woman who has been missing her love soul mate all her life, you need look no farther. I am right here. The internet wants us to be together. I have the spam email to prove it. You should IM me some time. We can go for coffee or something and then end up getting married two weeks later in an ill conceived whirlwind romance. And if you are a beautiful single woman who isn't named Robin, but you are willing to legally change your name to Robin for the sake of ill conceived whirlwind romances, the above applies to you as well. I want to hear from you, baby. But if you are a man, and your name is Robin, and you are my internet appointed love soul mate, I will make you this offer...You stay in your closet, and I will stay in mine and we need never speak of this again.