screening for creepies

when i was just getting to know my good blogmate (she'd correctly surmised that i had no idea how to drive in a snow storm and was riding home with me) she told me about a benign but weird guy from work who'd apparently misinterpreted her friendliness as romantic interest and started calling her at home. "i've never been good at screening for creepies," she said, in explanation for how she'd allowed such a thing to happen.

given my heinous run of bad dates you'd think that i'd be better at screening for creepies, but it seems that i've allowed the infiltration of a similarly benign, though decidedly weirder creepy.

by the time his e-mail came i was getting pretty used to hearing from random, long-lost friends. it was in the weeks following katrina and the "oh my god is your family OK?" shout-out was getting pretty routine.

the back story is that jb is a friend of a friend who i dated for something like 3 weeks my freshman year of college (yes, 10 years ago). by "dated," i mean got drunk and kissed at a series of parties before figuring out that he was a weirdo at which point i stopped returning his phone calls. he was very nice, pretty cute, and i think very smart (physics major, which at the time impressed me) but something about him was really off.

so 10 years later he sends a random, "hey i hope you don't think this is weird but blah blah hurricane, blah blah saw our mutual friend at the high school reunion and i just thought i'd see what you were up to" email. a quick background check (i.e. called our mutual friend) confirmed that he was just as weird as ever, so after appropriate delay (3 or 4 days) i wrote back a cordial, "hey, family is fine, i live in chicago, how are you?" sort of thing. he then came back with a much longer email in which he revealed that 1) he really is a weirdo an 2) he's still an undergrad. with that, i put an end to the interaction (mentally), deleted the email, and left it at that.

a week later it came- ANOTHER email. this one a "hey, just wanted to make sure you weren't not answering because i sounded weird- sometimes i come off weird in emails, by the way i'm coming to chicago soon do you want to get together?" had he been more specific about when he was coming i might have found the energy to fabricate a specific excuse, but under the circumstances it seemed meaner to throw a blanket, "gee, sorry, i'm really busy," than to yet again ignore the email and hope that he'd go away.

fortunatley he doesn't seem to have picked any serious creepy, stalker-ish attributes and i suspect that this little episode has come to a close... but it's left me asking myself a couple of questions:
#1) how did i let this happen?
#2) how can anyone be so awkward over email?

for the former, i have to be honest with myself and admit that 1) i was flattered (initially) and 2) i was secretly hoping that he'd shed his creepy tendencies in college and become a nice, cute, smart guy.

the latter is more troubling. i have contended, both on this blog and in my frequent and adamant refusals to go online for dating purposes, that ANYONE can project a cool persona over email. i myself often suggest online that i am witty, calm, and collected when, in fact, i possess none of these attributes. that this guy not only fails to supress his weirdness, but suggests that his emails exaggerate it is pretty concerning. sometimes honesty just isn't the best policy.