Harry__Lime, You have a new message from five2eyesofblue

five2eyesofblue says:

Hey there. I think it is a bold and brave move to declare that you don’t like coffee or tea…

It was 2012, deep in the age of post-post-modern romance, but irony and information overload had not made lonely souls obsolete. And so as she typed out letters on a screen, bound to stream ones and zeros across the effervescent ether to some other heart, she was a little bit nervous. There’s a person in there, after all; someone on the other end. What if he doesn’t reply?

Back then, to her, he was Harry Lime, bearded bespectacled fellow lounging against the virtual bar at a crowded online dating site. He had stolen his alter ego from a character in The Third Man who hustles a living in post-war Vienna selling poisoned medicine to dying children. Hers, “five2eyesofblue”, was a little more prosaic. (I mean, just look at her.) His pitch was some self-deprecating line about not drinking coffee. Her opening gambit was a compliment on his bravery. It worked. He, always a sucker for elegant sentence construction, opened the message.

One mouse click, two lives change. They met, they travelled, they moved in, they fell in love. They decided to get married. Matt started drinking coffee (occasionally). Jess still hasn’t seen The Third Man (yet).

And here’s the curious anecdote for the grandkids: it nearly never happened. After a couple weeks corresponding online Matt got called off to a byelection and Jessica – get this! – started dating another guy. Jess and Matt ceased to be without ever having met. And then, two months later, when things didn’t work out, Jess screwed up the courage again. Matt thought about it; said yes. Better late than never.

And now they’re forever.