Swipe App Generation

Dear S.Q. My grandkids explained how to find fine older ladies to date on Grinder and Tick Tock by sorting people into swipe left to disappear, and swipe right to like. Is a 10-second glance all it takes?

Dear Gramps, You’ve been hoodwinked. Grindr is touted as #1 LGBTQ+ dating app, and TikToc isn’t a dating platform, although you can flirt -but the common age is 16-24. I suggest you ask their parents, your kids, for the truth. Lots of fine older ladies would love to swipe with you, so find the right dating app and try a membership for a month or so. -SQ

Wedding Weather Witch. Weird or Wondrous?

Dear Suze Q,  My third wife-to-be has paring knives sticking out of the ground, next to some sausages she buried before the dog dug them up. The wedding planner asked the budget for the “weather witch.” I knew my to-be was superstitious, it was charming. My friends give the marriage a year because she’s a looney-tune. Am I making a mistake?

Dear Charmed, Maybe a third time marriage is the charm, or maybe knives out is a warning of stormy weather ahead. Past behavior is a good predictor of future outcomes. Rather than worry about her spells, I'd be more concerned about why your first two marriages tanked. -SQ

Click Bait

Dear Suze, For fun, I troll the social networks. I’m confused by posts of famous pictures that asks if you know it’s someone else, or would I rather be a rockstar or a world leader. What’s the point? 

Dear Troller, You are the perfect target for "click bait," a false or enticing headline that grabs your attention and provokes your emotional reaction. Can't you just feel your fingers itching to respond? Their goal is for you to click the link that generates money for them with each response. The number count yields them income, regardless of how frustrating or fake the site is to the consumer. Kind of like the "impulse items" at the store's check-out line that's designed for you to spontaneously buy what they're selling; there you actually get something worthwhile. Control your impulse on the internet, where what you see may be a deception, or worse -a computer virus. -SQ

Texting, the New Pick-Up Language

Jumping back into the dating pool after the marriage is over, the kids have gone, and you’re done pretending that you’re happy to die alone, -you decide to date. Terrified or excited or both, it’s time to kiss frogs, again, looking for your Prince(ss) Charming. You join a dating app and begin texting with complete strangers, exchanging bits and pieces of each other’s lives -sometimes the truth, or half-truth, or flat out lies. ✅ out Amazon (Kindle KDP) for my debut book: Cyber Frogs And Princes: A Sex Manual Of On-Line Dating After 50 by Suze Q

 

Is Father’s Day a Second Rate Holiday?

Dear Suze, The grown kids and I ask my husband every year what he wants for Father’s Day, same as they ask me for Mother’s Day. For both, we all get together for a nice meal. Father’s Day gifts are sports related; Mother’s Day are not. I hear and read a lot of bellyaching about Father’s Day isn’t as celebrated. Why?

Dear Mother, Mother’s Day began in the US in 1908 and is now universally celebrated by more than 40 countries. Although Father’s Day was proposed in 1908 too as a day to honor miner’s who died in an accident in WA, it didn’t become a U.S. national holiday until two years later. But… celebrating Father’s Day has been traced as far back as 1508 in religion circles, and is an international holiday celebrated in over, a whopping, 112 countries! Nothing second-rate about it. Remind the bellyachers of these facts. -SQ

Balboa Island

In my 20s, I lived as a single hippy chick two blocks from the Pacific Ocean in Newport Beach, CA. Balboa Island was a nightly happening with the Fun Zone’s Ferris wheel, arcade, and merry-go-round next door to friendly bars with loud music. 

When I started dating again, a reborn virgin 20 years after my divorce, Willie took me to Balboa where we necked like teenagers. But alas, the next day I received this text:

Willie: I was amazed that during the short time we spent together that I was so sexually aroused by you.  After my prostate cancer 15 years ago, sex with my wife was always aided by pharmaceuticals and manipulation. Our get-together opened flood gates and scared the hell out of me so I am retreating into my comfortable world and cannot see you again. Don't ask for more of an explanation because I just don't have one.  

He hoped that I'd forgive him but the experience was too overwhelming. I can be a big supporter of forgiveness and wished him well. I'm equally a fan of forgive and forget, Willie who?

Excerpt from Chapter 15: Willie.  Available on Amazon in Suze Q's debut book: Cyber Frogs And Princes: A Sex Manual Of On-Line Dating After 50.  Pick up a copy now, just in time for Father's Day, or fun summer reading. -SQ

Juneteenth

Dear Readers. Are you celebrating? Because it’s the opening of the Obama Presidential Center on the south-side of Chicago? Or more humbling, because today celebrates the U.S. federal holiday 🎉, Juneteenth National Independence Day, the day slavery officially ended in Texas in 1865, -two years and five months AFTER President Lincoln freed all slaves by the Emancipation Proclamation. I’m happy to celebrate both of these events, but I will be ecstatic when freedom truly means acceptance, inclusion, and broad-mindedness. -SQ