The first phone call...

The gamer guy from eHarmony that looked and sounded very promising wrote back and explained what an odd week he had had last week (he had a kidney stone and had an unexpected out-of-town visitor) and then said he'd call me on Saturday. Which he did. Unfortunately, I was in the middle of a game. Rather than let it go to voice mail, I answered my phone, asked if I could call him back and did so about 20 minutes later. We had a somewhat disjointed conversation that didn't really "flow" for about 10 minutes (plus, I couldn't hear him very well because I was outside and there was airport noise overhead) before he asked if he could call ME back on Sunday because he was at a restaurant and had just been served his food. He had mentioned during the first call he was headed to a Dodger game that evening, so I said, "Sure, sounds great. I should be home tomorrow." (Which I was, doing my taxes, ugh!)

And then, come Sunday, he didn't call. And hasn't yet. It could be that he's just been busy or something, but I'm wondering if our first awkward conversation made him less interested. It wasn't great, I admit that, but I wouldn't categorize it as *SO* awful that I wouldn't want to talk to him again. But maybe he did. If he doesn't call, he doesn't call. I could send a prodding email to nudge him a bit, but why? If he's interested, he'll call. If he's *that* easily deterred/discouraged, then I guess that's that. Although, I'm SO tempted to send an email that says, "Hey, I know our first conversation wasn't the best, but let's try again!" or something to that effect. A few friends I've discussed it with have had mixed advice on that. I'll ponder that this weekend and then decide for sure next week.

I remember when I first met Jason, the first several times I talked to him on the phone were awful! In person, it was great. The reason? Something like 80% of communication is non-verbal. That's why it's especially difficult to talk to someone you don't know over the phone. For this very reason, I've been suggesting to eHarmony guys that we meet. I really don't need to go through a couple weeks of back and forth emails. I'd rather just meet and see if we click, or even semi-click. I haven't had a lot of dates though because unfortunately, I've been lax on answering the open-ended questions. So, my goal lately has been to answer one guy's questions a day. Sometimes I've been succeeding and sometimes I haven't. I need to get back on that.