by Donna Carroll Batton

Created on: January 01, 2009

Whenever the occasion arrises as to how I met my Floridian-native husband when I've lived most of my sixty-six years in the winter-chilly environs of Western New York, I try to find a better way of saying, "We met online." Those words always seem to conjure up images of sexy chat rooms or online dating forums. While I'm sure many legitimate romances were started this way, being a senior citizen somehow taints the picture. So I struggle to explain how we "innocently" wound up on each other's ICQ (an instant messaging program) buddy list.

Actually, this is both a truthful, though somewhat misleading insinuation. While it is true that neither my husband of now almost eight years, nor I remember how this came about, I have rather vague memories of filling out some sort of "bio" on the ICQ-over-50 site. Since I deleted old IM's regularly, the fact is forever lost as to who initiated the contact.

Be that as it may, I had been divorced for over twelve years, hadn't even dated since I'd been busy trying to usher five children safely through their teen years, hold down a full time job and go to college part time. I finally managed to finish college, marry off my kids and get promoted to caseworker in the county for which I worked. Things finally began to calm down in my life.

I remember clicking on Roger's name on my buddy list one day, as I saw the indicator letting me know he was online. I introduced myself and we "talked" for about twenty minutes. The next contact was when I decided to send everyone (about fifteen people) on my buddy list an e-card wishing each of them a happy Thanksgiving. The next evening, when I logged into my e-mail, there was a message from Roger, thanking me for the nice Thanksgiving card. I, of course, promptly e-mailed him back, saying he was very welcome. Need I say more? By the end of that week I was smitten. It seemed, as we wrote back and forth, learning more and more about each other, that we had a lot in common. It wasn't long before I was hurrying through dinner so I could long on and get the next "installment."

I discovered that Roger lived in south central Florida, in an inland fishing and agricultural city. I had never heard of Okeechobee before, picturing only condo-lined beaches and resorts in the sunshine state. He knew about as much, or as little, about Buffalo, New York. We then graduated to sending videotapes to each other. Thus, I "met" his family and he met mine. Roger has four grown children and had just welcomed his tenth

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