Michael D. Davis.

Well, this is my last column of the year, and believe me when I tell you, I am not going to forget 2025 anytime soon. Chances are, I will at some point, Alzheimer’s and insanity run in the family, but until then, it shall be stuck in my head. This year has been complicated, crushing, exciting, fun, and, ultimately unpredictible. For me, that’s because of a single thread that tied my whole year together.

I always start this story with the same sentence: like every 21st-century loser, I’m on the dating apps. However, I need to back up a little here. Let me tell you how that happened.

Back in March or May, one of the M months, I took an online quiz. I love taking quizzes. Mainly, those tests that tell you about yourself, your IQ, whether you’re a Spock or a Kirk, you get me. Anyway, late one night I got curious, and I took the introductory Eharmony quiz. I only wanted to take the quiz. However, to see the results, you have to make an account. I did so, and I got a 140 out of 140 on empathy. That was cool. And in theory, that’s where things should have ended. Obviously, it didn’t.

The day after I took the quiz, I was sent a message from a woman’s profile. I couldn’t see it because I wasn’t subscribed. I wasn’t sure what to do. I was filled with curiosity, and I also thought it was the polite thing to send a response. So, I bought a subscription, I don’t know how, but I ended up with a year’s subscription. I saw the message, I politely responded, and the woman deleted her profile. So, now I had a year’s subscription to this site, and I didn’t know what to do.

A few months go by, and eventually I give in. I fully filled out my profile. And then I thought, screw it, and over the following months, I downloaded a few other apps. There were ups, there were downs, and I got ghosted more times than Dr. Peter Venkman.

This one time I met a nice lady on an app, we talked, we are getting along, and she asks to switch to text. I say, okay. Once we start texting things, immediately get weird. And me being the curious, suspicious fool I am, I did what comes naturally to me, investigate or research.

Then I asked the lady if I could tell her a story, she said sure, and I sent her the following: I was not too good in school. My best subjects were English and Art. I didn’t seek out to be a news reporter; I fell into it. I’ve won some awards for it. One was an investigative journalist award because I’m good at research and sniffing stuff out. I like mysteries, and I hate lies. And two minutes after you first texted me, I was able to find out that the phone number you are using is registered to 68-year-old Larry E [REDACTED], who lives at 222 [REDACTED] Street in Shelbyville, Indiana. Any thoughts on this?

Strangely, she stopped texting and deleted her profile from the app. I wonder why?

Not every person I met turned out to be a geriatric man from Indiana, but that doesn’t mean it still isn’t odd. After my brief text exchange with Larry, I met another lady on an app. We hit it off, and things are going well. One day, while we are talking, she says that I am a suspicious person, that I am always asking questions, and the like.

I said it’s because I’m made up of 50% curiosity and 50% suspicion of everyone, and it has suited me well. I then told her about my brief love affair there with Larry.

The Larry story then prompted her to tell me that she grew up in foster care in California, and that she hadn’t seen her brother in decades. She wondered if I could find him. I said I didn’t know, but I’d try. Two weeks, several hours, one birth certificate, many emails with California Social Services, and I know very little.

I believe I know where he went to school and lived when he was a teenager, that’s it. His last name was changed when he was adopted as a boy, which made things a whole lot harder. In the end, I gave up, and she and I stopped talking anyway.

An interesting side note here. During my search for the long-lost brother, I sent an email to California Social Services on a Monday. That same Monday, I sent an email to a local citizen asking questions for an article. California got back to me on Tuesday. The local citizen got back to me on Friday, I believe. That’s hilarious to me.

So, you can now see why I won’t be forgetting 2025. In 2025, I was taking online quizzes, buying frivolous subscriptions, dating Larry, and searching for long-lost brothers. And that’s only a fraction of my year.