The Best Kept Secret Blog - Lucy, you got some 'splaining to do!

If curiosity killed the cat, it's put me in the doghouse. You see I accidentally joined LavalifePRIME, an on-line dating service for people over 45.

This would be a good thing if I was single. Problem is, I'm happily married and now I'm getting e-mails from people with names like Dr. Love who type subject lines that read "Do you want some candy?"

Lucy, you got some 'splaining to do!

Okay, the first question you're asking is "Why were you on Lavalife in the first place?" Good question. I was there doing research for my web-site The Best Kept Secret. It's something our set would be curious about so I decided to check it out.

"Why on earth did you join? Couldn't you just look at it?"

Well, that's what I was doing - just looking. And that's when I saw a picture of a friend of mine. And I wanted to say hi. Sort of the cyber equivalent of seeing an acquaintance across the room at a crowded party.

So, I decided to e-mail V. And here's where things began to get complicated. It seems you can't e-mail anyone until you join.

Hmmm. What harm could that do? "It's free", I reckoned. "I'll just e-mail V. and get right out of here."

Well, it seems joining an on-line dating service is a tad more involved than giving my name and postal code.

First, I had to come up with an on-line nickname. I wanted something that wouldn't call a lot of attention to myself. I thought about my childhood nickname - "cross-eyed, pigeon toed". Yes, that would do nicely.

There were the expected questions about when I was born, what city I lived in, what kind of a body type I had. (Pear shaped wasn't on the list, by the way.)

Then I had to provide some kind of a headline. To help me along, the sign up screen encouraged me to tell other members something interesting that happened to me that day. Well, they were catching me on a particularly bad day. The best I could come up with was "Removed hair clog from bathtub."

Now I was in. I quickly e-mailed V. ("Hi. It's me. Is that you? Well, bye.") and logged off for the night. In the interest of full-disclosure, I told my husband about my escapade (he just shook his head) and I thought that was that.

But it wasn't. The next day I got e-mail from Lavalife. Thinking it was V., I was surprised to find the missive from Dr. Love. The next day, I got one from Boomer Boy. Surprisingly, there are people out there who find hair clog removing women named Cross-Eyed, Pigeon Toed appealing.

My husband, however, did not find any of this appealing. By now his reaction was moving beyond head shaking and on to finger-wagging. It was time to delete my account.

So ends my adventures with Lavalife. I just don't know how to break it to Dr. Love.