Hark Back to the High Tech World

I got an Instant Message (IM) recently from Jonas, a friend back from when I worked at HiTekk in Central City. Jonas got married, much to his surprise and that of everyone around him. No, Jonas is not socially retarded or congenitally ugly. He is a gamer. By his own admission, he spent so much time playing computer games that he had no time to date. He once told me, "If I ever get married, it will be a virtual marriage, resulting from virtual dates in computer chat rooms. We will have virtual kids, just like in the computer game The Sims. And we will have cybersex only.

"Then twenty years later we will meet and I will find out I married somebody's parakeet. People will point us out on the street and say look, there's Jonas and his wife "Pretty Bird" Burton."

While Jonas did not date often, it did not prevent him from commenting on others' dating lives. Another HiTekk coworker, Donna, once met a man on eHarmony.com and was waxing enthusiastic about meeting him. "He says he's a pilot!" she exclaimed. "And he says his business has something to do with agriculture."

"Aha!" Jonas retorted. "He's a crop duster!"