The Squeaky Wheel

Dearest Rachel –

I never intended to make this story into a multi-part tale. I fully expected to be telling you about what happened (or, more to the point, what didn’t happen, as I’ve no expectations that anything will come of tonight’s get-together, any more than anything has come of my attempts at online dating, to be honest) tomorrow, after the fact, and leave things at that. But the comedy of errors that brought me to this point – and the attempts on both sides to make things right before the signup deadline – has been such that I feel somewhat compelled to fill you in on the lead-up beforehand, and let you decide whether you’re amused by the story or not.

I mentioned just the other day about how I need to discover a new venue in which to find new friends; specifically, to find a female friend who might turn out to be Megumi. Since my situation is relatively common knowledge at our home church – and I keep mentioning looking for her at church, because of all the interests I might wish that Megumi would share with me, I’ve concluded that a mutual faith would supersede them all – I felt that I would need to look elsewhere; presumably somewhere with a ministry geared toward older singles (which are a rare commodity at our age; generally, if you’re only/already fifty and single, there’s a reason). So, the idea would be to inveigle my way into a church with a larger population overall, in hopes of finding a few possible candidates (and put myself out there as much as for others, in turn).

In short, a megachurch.

Fortunately, there’s one almost in our backyard. Very nearly literally, in fact, if I was to take into consideration the place I spent more than twenty years working at. I hardly even have to name the place, although I may very well have in a previous letter. Presumably, they would have a ministry even to those in my station in life; I would see if I couldn’t find out what they might have to offer.

No surprise, they do have a group ministry for older singles. And as well as a weekly Bible study (which takes place between Sunday services, so that’s rather out of the question), they have a monthly get-together on selected Fridays. Apart from the fact that the girls have been making noises about getting together this Friday – and I gave them my blessing to make plans apart from me, not that they need anything like that to do so (although they do seem reluctant; for all that Erin and Ellen especially enjoy each other’s company, they can’t seem to bring themselves to meet apart from the group at large, but whatever) – that works out pretty well. It doesn’t interfere with what commitments I’ve made back home at the Bridge, and it gives me the chance to meet a whole new circle of people, thus improving my chances of finding, if not Megumi herself at first, someone (or someones) who might know – or become – her.

One thing about such larger gatherings, however, is that they don’t scale up perfectly. You can’t just show up and expect to be accommodated – which sometimes seems counterintuitive, as in such a crowd, what’s one more person, after all? But if everyone were to show up like that, how could they plan? There could be eight people, there could be eighty; there’s no way to ensure that there are enough refreshments for everyone, for instance, without having way too much. So, in a place like this, they put up efficiencies; in this case, an online registration form. Perfectly understandable. I fill it out, and attempt to submit it to them.

And here’s where things start to go sideways. You’ll notice I said ‘attempt,’ there. That pretty much sums it up; when I hit the ‘Finish’ button, I got the puzzling response, “An error occurred processing your registration: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.” I like to consider myself reasonably tech-savvy; while I’m not a programmer by any means (and have no desire to be one), I know my way around certain systems reasonably well, and am familiar with, if decidedly rusty at, computer syntax. I confess to being utterly lost as to the meaning of this message. What I did realize, was that I wasn’t registered, and there was a deadline coming up within the next twenty-four hours.

I suppose I could have thrown up my hands, concluded that God didn’t want me going to this event, and left it at that. It wouldn’t have been entirely out of character for me. And, for that matter, it would have allowed me to be a part of whatever the girls were planning for this evening (not that the subject had even come up at this point).

But for once, I decided to be a bit more persistent. I contacted a few of the emails identified on the website, and let them know of my situation. If nothing else, I figured I would be doing them a favor by warning them of a problem with their registration system; I couldn’t be the only one getting shut out of the process. After a series of back-and-forth emails, getting several people in both the singles ministry as well as the church’s IT department (yes, they’re big enough to have an IT department – are you surprised?), it was straightened out. The squeaky wheel had gotten the grease, and I was signed in for tonight. Why, I was even able to volunteer to set things up (seeing as I was free to arrive early enough to do so, given my ‘work’ schedule), although I have to fill out a background check form.

The most interesting thing about it was that I was contacted by phone on my way home from work yesterday by the individual in charge of the singles ministry – a nice personal touch for such a large organization; but then, I did point out a situation they needed to deal with. Apart from the shock of being greeted by name (which I always do to unfamiliar numbers, in order to throw off spam callers – imagine my own surprise when “Lisa” actually turned out to be Lisa!), she was very pleasant to talk with, and while she admitted she wouldn’t be able to be at tonight’s get-together, she was looking forward to meeting me in a subsequent month – especially after I explained how I couldn’t make it to November’s gathering, and, more to the point, why. She was insistent that I tell her everything about my trip to Israel, as she’d been there thirty years ago, and was really looking forward to getting back there again at some point.

Well, she does have my number, and email address.

In any event, if she is representative of the kind of folks I might expect to meet tonight, I have to say, things look promising. If nothing else, it will be nice to introduce myself to a number of others dealing with a similar situation as myself… and who’s to say what might come of it?

With that in mind, honey, keep an eye on me, and wish me luck. I’m going to need it.