Our regular contributor D.A. Smith provides a column on internet dating.

So, knowing that we live in the future and not being one to dwell in the past, I decided to give online personals a shot. Besides, I had a former roommate who continues to be in a long-term, healthy relationship with a woman she had met while hitchhiking on the information superhighway. Hoo boy! What a Pandora’s box this turned out to be.

With my mother’s warnings about talking to ax-wielding strangers in my head, I whipped up a profile describing my Wonder Bread upbringing, listed my interests, and threw it out there like I would a fishing line at Folly Beach. What I reeled in was what I loosely refer to as “life’s rich pageant.”