"Ah, dessert! Chilled monkey brains!"

Last week, I made a proclamation.  I decided to have a sort of cleansing and wipe the slate clean of all web-based dating connections.  I didn't outright tell any of the gentlemen in question, just kind of let things fade off into the sunset.  I thought I'd done a good job of that until the night before last.

Once the carpal tunnel had subsided a bit, I had actually kind of forgotten the sound of the text message tone on my new phone.  I was sitting in the living room and thought "Hmm...wonder who that could be."  I looked down and noticed that it was Mr. Morals.  He was writing to check on the status of my hand and to find out if I'd had a good previous weekend.  I replied that my hand was better (with the insane desire to stipulate that it was better for now, keep up the texting and we'll be right back where we started!  But, I resisted.) and that I'd had a good weekend, with the usual pleasantries of the return of the same question.  We had a completely G-rated (which is good!  And a relief!) conversation for a few texts and then the conversation naturally, as so often happens when two people have never met and don't really know anything about each other because they've only ever texted, died.  I figure, eh, this will be the end of the road for me and Mr. Morals.  Don't get me wrong, I wasn't miserable chatting with him, but there was nothing really that ever sparked my curiosity or interest enough to think "Man, I wish this guy would call me/ask me out/etc."  He likes baseball and he loves his mama.  That's about all I know about him because our conversations were always so general and so broad.

Well, then it finally dawned on me that something weird had been happening whenever our text conversations went into a lull.  Mr. Morals attempts to breathe life back into our flat-lining conversations by asking me "What's for dinner?"  Regardless of the time of day and even changing the tense if it seems that the normal person would have already eaten at the point of which he is sending the text.  When he first did it, I thought that this was a creative way for him to find out foods I liked and maybe, eventually, if I was a good girl and behaved myself in line with his morals, he'd ask me out to a restaurant that fell within the consensus of my responses.  Clever.  But, after the tenth, eleventh, twelth time of asking, it's just a little bit...well, odd.  It really only extends the conversation about four more texts, with my response and question back to him, his menu description for the evening, my "Mmm, that sounds good" (I know it's not clever, but I mean, what do you say to this?!?) and his usual reply that he'd rather have what I'm having.  Maybe that means I eat things I shouldn't be on a nightly basis...or that I should write for a culinary magazine, but whatever.

Then, as if granted by the dating gods, I got another one of those lovely eHarmony advice emails this morning.  It contained a list of great, jumpstarting things to ask during a first date or first conversation.  There were honestly some really good questions on there, but I'm not sure how well they'd flow in a normal conversation.  Things like "What's your favorite way to spend a Saturday?," "Favorite movie of all time," "Have you figured out your calling in life? What is it?"  All conversation-starting suggestions at their finest.  Although obviously not acquired from this list, I'm pretty sure that this inquiry into my eating habits is Mr. Moral's Go-To Question for conversation lulls. 

I should probably add some of these to my repertoire because questions like "Where do you work?" and "What does an average day look like for you?" tend to steer any romance straight towards job interview nervousness.  However, I'm pretty sure I'll stay away from a daily inquiry into sustenance consumption.  Maybe next time, if there is a next time and I'm kind of hoping there isn't, I'll tell him that I just had a giant plate of steaming pig's feet or a bowl full of yummy monkey brains (still tramatized from Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom).  That will probably seal the deal on this never-ending cycle of texting.

What's the weirdest thing anyone has ever asked you while on a date or by a potential match?