Sorry - Love (Part II of How I Met Serach)

This is Part II of a series about how I proposed to Serach. Part I is here. I'm currently giving the background of the story...

Jon: (Jon storms into my room, fuming:) It's not funny!

Ez: What's not funny?

Did you do it?

Do what?!

Someone put up Serach and I (*Jon) on OnlySimchas as engaged. She's dating! People have called her to wish her mazel tov!

Uh-oh. Let me try and figure out who did it, and get it down.

I quickly made some calls to the friends of ours who could have done it, and within about an hour we figured it out. The person who had put it up had never heard of OnlySimchas* until 2 days earlier, which is uncommon in the circle we're in. He only saw it for the first time when someone put up a fake posting of two friends making Aliyah - albeit it under funny names with hilarious posts. Unfortunately, it was late at night, and impossible to reach an administrator of the site to have it removed - and the poster had no clue how to take it off himself. Meanwhile, I e-mailed Serach to apologize for the situation she was in, and assured her that we were trying to get it down. It's quite uncomfortable to have good friends calling, wondering why they never even heard of the guy you're "engaged" to, let alone to not know you were dating seriously.

* OnlySimchas is a site on which people post whatever festive occasions have just occurred or are about to occur, and people can leave messages to the celebrants. Many engagements and weddings among other smachot in the Orthodox world are posted on this site, and many people (such as Serach) check OS religiously to see which friends are engaged or who just had a baby, etc., and wish them Mazel Tov - particularly if they're in a different city or country. It's a wonderful service that gathers about 20 million page views a month.

Serach was appreciative of my e-mail, and e-mailed me a thank you. After a number of hours, the post was finally removed from the website, but not before the Luchins family received a number of calls wishing them mazel tov on an event that had never occurred. The person who posted it apologized, and his co-conspirator sent Serach an apology by e-mail. The problem is, he signs all his e-mails the same way - with a dash and his last name, such as - Johnson. The letter looked something like this:

Dear Serach,

Hi - I'm really sorry about posting you on OnlySimchas. It was a bad joke, and we shouldn't have done it. We didn't intend to hurt you in any way.

- Love

Serach opens up her e-mail, and there's this short apology note from someone signed "Love", without a name. This confused her completely, wondering why someone who she doesn't know just did something a bit mean, then followed it up with an anonymous apology saying "Love". Completely flustered, she called Jon and myself, and after a couple minutes, we were able to straighten it out.

Apparently, Serach was very appreciative of my e-mail. We started talking a little bit, and... well, you'll have to stay tuned for the rest. But to this day, when people ask us how we started going out, we look at each other, laugh, and answer:

OnlySimchas!

Good Shabbos!

Ezzie: The next part of the story will iyH come motzei Shabbos (Sat. night). Perhaps we'll get Serach's side of the story at some point, much as Robert has with Karen. But don't count on it. :)