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| Tip #20: Network as if you were NBC! Sept. 3, 2010 Networking ignites. Carol, volunteering at a library, shyly asked a fellow volunteer if she knew any available single men. To Carol’s delight she not only did, but offered to introduce her to them. Networking. It’s good stuff – the same thing advertisers do when they want to tell the world about their products. You’re not going to reach 20 million people, but all you need is one. Shrinking violets bloom unseen. So turn off your Shy Button and start spreading the word that you’re available, and keep spreading it. Tell just about everyone you know or meet that if they know any nice appropriately-aged men, you’d love to meet them. Ask your hair-dresser. Ask your children. Ask the postwoman. If you live in a high-rise, ask your elevator man. That’s what I said: your elevator man. Ellen’s friendliness and her generous holiday tips to her building’s elevator operator had him taking her seriously when she told him she was “looking” and asked if he knew any single men in the building around her age who might be doing the same. The blood might have drained out of her mother’s face had she heard her ask the question, but this was fearless modern networking at its best, and he helped her make a successful connection. Vivian, a recent divorcee, approached me some years ago at our bridge club and said, “I hear your husband was a doctor. I’d love to marry a doctor. You must have lots of doctor friends. Could you fix me up?” I didn’t, but she continued to network boldly between hands until she was “fixed up” with the unattached brother of one of our members. They’ve been married for five years, and it wouldn’t have happened if she’d been too embarrassed to ask. You never know when Cupid will choose you for target practice, but it helps if you supply the little fella with some extra arrows. Life -- a new life -- can sneak up on you after a mate dies. Suzette a French tour guide, told us how her 72-year-old grandmother brought flowers to her late husband’s grave every Wednesday morning. After a while, she noticed a pleasant-looking gentleman doing the same at his wife’s stone. They talked. They liked what they saw and heard. With their deceased spouses as matchmakers, they became a couple. Said Suzette, “My grandmother’s late husband had been so straitlaced and frugal that if she wanted to go dancing, she climbed out the window after he fell asleep. She and her new man bought a car together and traveled, doing all the things she’d been denied. They kept separate homes, visiting each other on alternate weekends. My grandmother always had something to look forward to. ‘My,’ she’d say, ‘it’s Wednesday. How nice. In just two days, I’ll be going to Pierre’s house.” In South Florida, where women outnumber men the way the Persians did the Greeks at the Battle of Thermopylae, some women unembarrassedly take matters into their own hands. They print cards with their e-mail addresses and phone numbers and boldly offer them to men they chance to meet. Is this brassy and brazen? Not if it works. Sometimes women find their new man at a bereavement group, and, of course, that’s equally true of men -- like the man who lost his wife and, for the first time, went to a group that met for lunch in the back of a restaurant. When he arrived, he asked the manager where the group met. “You’re going in there?” asked the manager. “You’re going to have a great time.” He went in and found that he was the only man with 17 women. Six months later, he married one of them. My friend Shirley, whom I’ve known for more decades than I care to count, wasn’t sure about joining the hospital’s bereavement group when Irving, her husband of 40 years, died of cancer. “I pictured a bunch of women listening to each other’s stories and soaking packs of tissues,” Shirley recalls, “and I wasn’t sure I could take it. Actually, there was some crying, but it was all about sharing feelings, and I could see right away that letting it out was going to be good for us. There were more women than men, of course. One of the men interested me – he was very articulate -- but I got the impression he was attracted to another woman. When she talked about going on a cruise to start life over, he asked,‘Hmm, would you like company?’ Truthfully? That annoyed me.” As Shirley left the final session, the man who’d asked that annoying question fell in beside her. “Jerry,” Shirley said as they walked toward the elevator, “you’re a very attractive man, and it’s time to move on. There’s a woman I’d like you to meet.” Jerry stopped and took her hand. “Shirley,” he asked, “how about speaking for yourself?” “I lost interest when you asked Carol if she’d like company on her cruise.” “You can’t be serious. I was just kidding around!” By the time the elevator arrived, they had agreed to dinner. By dessert, both knew that a new relationship had begun. Previous Tip Or if you can not wait that long, you can simply purchase the book at: |
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$14.95 Published: March, 2009 Format: Perfect Bound Softcover Pages: 192 Size: 6x9 |
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