Find me a find, catch me a catch

It all began at the closing reception of my conference in Ireland a few weeks ago. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted Mrs. Pescado-Hombre, wife of Dr. Pescado-Hombre, a super-prominent scholar in my field. She and her husband the good doctor have been friends for decades with Dr. and Mrs. FirTree, who are my dad's somewhat elderly cousins (making them maybe my first cousins once removed?), and because of this somewhat remote connection, I ended up chauffeuring them around Northern California one winter afternoon several years ago. Anyway, having spotted Mrs. P-H, I went over to say hello and to see if she needed help getting food or a beverage (Mrs. P-H is a bit on the frail side).

"Of course I remember you!" was her response to my introduction. "Have you started learning Yiddish yet?" After I mumbled my embarrassed "not yet" (tactfully neglecting to mention that chances of my learning Arabic in the next few years are way higher than Yiddish) the conversation wended its way around to our mutual connection. "Nu, I was on the phone with [Mrs. FirTree] the other day," said Mrs. P-H, "and did you know that she's working on marrying you off?"

"Um, I don't really talk to [Mrs. FirTree] all that often," I replied (I mean, maybe 5? 6? times in my adult life). "Are you sure you're not confusing me with someone else?"

"No, it's definitely you," she said, "such a shame all my boys are already married." Luckily, this somewhat horrifying conversation was interrupted by the arrival of Dr. P-H, with whom I briefly shmoozed before he and his wife were wafted away in a sea of admirers.

I mentioned this little interaction to my parents a few days later because I had found it so very entertaining, and also wondered if they knew who Mrs. FirTree was really working on marrying off. They laughed and said, "We have no idea. We haven't heard the first thing about it. And don't blame us -- we have nothing to do with it!" Now we know that my dad is kind of desperate for grandkids, but even in his despair it's hard to imagine that he would turn to his elderly, religiously observant and blind (since her teen years) cousin who lives in a remote section of the Bronx and who he sees maybe twice a year to find me a husband.

Cut to one week later, when I find a voice mail from my mother in which she is clearly convulsed with laughter. "I just got off the phone with [Mrs. FirTree], and I think you should call me." Well, guess what? Mrs. FirTree and her friend the rabbi have decided that I need to meet his son, Mr. Yale Lawyer, Esq. "He's tired of his father interfering, though," Mrs. FirTree apparently told my mother, "so when she calls him on the phone she can't mention either me or his father." I'm going to call him on the phone? But how do I have his phone number? "Let's say she met someone at her conference in Ireland -- we'll call him Bob Roth -- and he gave her the phone number." "I don't know," said my mom, "[Pangea] really prefers to be a bit more straightforward. We'll see." After my mother related the story of the phone call (still a bit stunned, as she never, ever talks to Mrs. FirTree on the phone), we revelled in the many logical flaws in the concocted story. "First of all," said mom, "this Bob Roth character just happened to go to this conference in Ireland with this guy's phone number just in case he met a nice Jewish girl who was also single and lived in the Spookytown metro region?" "Not only that," I continued, "but won't this guy notice that he doesn't know anyone named Bob Roth?" It was all too much.

Now, although I have NO interest in being set up with random Spookytown men, let alone lawyerly types (and, mind you, lawyerly types who have clerked for one of the most conversative and, let's say, harassment-oriented legal minds in the American judiciary), I found this all too much to resist. On the one hand, there is no way in hell I will want to date this Mr. Yale Lawyer, Esq., and not just because we surely have nothing in common -- generally I meet one guy a year that I find really compelling, and I've already met this year's version, who unfortunately is geographically distant (and not in a place I'd want to move) and recently turned out to have a heart that is already encumbered (although I'm like 90% sure that my crush is not unrequited). On the other hand, my regrets in life are almost always of the "I wish I had done that" variety and almost never of the "I wish I hadn't done that" variety. So last week I e-mailed the son of my elderly distant cousin's deceased childhood friend and told him what was going on (without naming names) and we are meeting up next week for coffee (or maybe a cooler beverage because for God's sake people it was 100 fucking degrees today) to discuss the entertaining nature of Jewish matchmaking. I'll let you know how it goes.