Red Flags a Flyin'

After my first online chat with Myz, I couldn't wait for the next chance to connect with her. It seemed like she was very interested in me.

I was concerned about what would happen if we decided to meet in person. I looked up how far away San Jose was from San Diego. It was about 450 miles. That meant at least an eight-hour drive. On top of that, I would have to drive through Los Angeles on I-5 to get there, so that could cause it to take even longer.

I had added her screen name to the list of contacts I wanted to see when they became active on AOL. I hoped that she would be looking forward to hearing from me, too. Over the next couple of days, I didn't see her log on while I was on. Then one day, she IM'd me. It was great that she reached out to me! However, I noticed that she didn't show up on my "active" list. Did she block me from being able to see when she was on-line? Why did she do that if she liked me?

Whatever. I was just happy she didn't completely disappear. We chatted for a short period of time. But she wrote something that was a little strange. She made reference to her sister. Wait, she only mentioned that she had two brothers, but no sister. I pointed out that she hadn't mentioned the sister the day before. She clarified that her sister was her older brother's girlfriend and they had a child together. Even though they weren't married, she considered her a sister.

Okay, so I was starting to wonder if this was the tip of an iceberg, like with Molz. Was this going to be another situation in which I might be subjected to a Spanish Prisoner scheme? The problem was that everything else she said seemed so genuine. I wanted her to be real. I just had to figure out how much caution to use moving forward. How would I know for certain?

This chat got cut short because of a problem with the computer. I wasn't able to save it.

We would continue the on-line chatting for the next couple of weeks. Another thing I learned about her that caused me some distress was that she was into pro wrestling. (What is it with so many women I meet being into pro wrestling?) She was a big fan of Stone Cold Steve Austin. She said she had videos, a poster and a license plate that said "Austin 3:16." (At the time, I didn't know what it meant. While writing this, I decided to look that up. It was not what I was expecting.)

Eventually, she sent me her photograph. She was very cute, with a round face, long black hair and a little mole above her lip. I responded that I thought she was beautiful. She said no one had told her that before. (I'm certain that wasn't true.) I sent her my picture. She said, "Not bad." (But I wasn't certain if she really liked what she saw. However, she considered to chat with me, so I guess my appearance wasn't an obstacle. But if a con is going on, the level of attractiveness is the last thing that's going to bring the scheme to an end.)

There was another issue that was concerning. She told me that her older brother had been involved in a gang in Monterey and had gotten in trouble with the law before. But he was doing what he could now to stay clean. I looked up Vietnamese gangs in San Jose on the Internet and found there was a real problem with them in the area. I started getting worried about this prospect. I didn't know how protective he was of his sister and maybe he might not like her dating someone who was considerably older.

Eventually, I got up the guts to ask her if she wanted to talk on the phone. She excitedly said yes and gave me her number. She told me that I needed to be prepared because she sounded really young. I called her up and she answered. The first thing that struck me was that she didn't have an accent. When she told me during the first chat that she was Americanized, I guess this was what she meant. (To be honest, it was hard to tell from the chats. She didn't use punctuation and had a lot of mispelled and shortened versions of words. it was like she was typing with an accent.)

We talked and had a very good conversation. A lot of the fears I had about her being genuine were generally laid to rest. However, I knew I had to continue being cautious. We were obviously heading toward finding a way to meet each other. I knew that I was going to have to drive all the way to San Jose to make that happen. I didn't think we were going to be able to arrange to meet halfway in the middle of California.

That little adventure is coming up.