calling all creepers...

My mom is out in the dating world. It took me a really long time to be ok with it, but I don't want her to be lonely so eventually I got on board with it. She dated a guy who was decently nice for a while, like a year and a half, then one day after a date she just never heard from him again. Totally weird. They had plans for two weeks later to go on a trip to Florida together and he just never went and he dropped off the face of the planet. Except he didn't, she still sees him driving around and has seen him out and about once or twice. At 50+ this behavior is just weird. It isn't like it was 2 dates in, they had been seeing each other for 18 months!

But alas, she is trying to put herself out there again. I met Mike online using Cupid and my older sister met her boyfriend that way too. Mom has started toying around with internet dating a little bit. If nothing else, browsing the profiles and looking at the pictures is endlessly entertaining. The things that men thing are appropriate to share about themselves in a profile is just hilarious, and the pictures are even better. She has been contacted by a few men, apparently ladies in "her generation" don't make the first contact, and she has started chatting with some. Most of these conversations go nowhere, but after a while she decided one guy was worth going out with. For these purposes I'll call him Joe. 

Joe asked to go out for a quick dinner, that seemed harmless enough and she agreed. They made a date for last Wednesday. She let him pick the place, Perkins, and the time, 6pm. Other than my side note that Perkins is not really a dinner location, but rather a quick breakfast joint, all seemed fine. Then she shows up at the date and he hands her a wrapped box. It was wrapped nicely enough in silver paper (I wasn't there so I don't have pictures of that part) and inside was a ton of Jets (yes the football team!) paraphernalia. Weird. I guess they had talked about how he is a big fan of the Jets and she mentioned that she is a Giants fan. He was "enticing her to the dark side" as he put it. So weird. The box had 3 t-shirts, 2 gym towels, a couple magnets, 2 key chains, some game day stickers for under your eyes, a coffee mug and an autographed picture. Now, I could have believed that maybe this was free stuff that they give all season ticket holders, but 2 of the t-shirts actually still had price tags on them. She doesn't seem to find it as weird as I do. When I saw the giant shoe box full of Jets gear I was shocked. I think it is SO weird....

What are your thoughts??