Match.com junior high

The sixth graders are tapping away on their cell phones in an effort to produce the perfect couple.

Girl Kamikaze tries pairing her brother with everyone she can think of, but no one scores higher than 60 percent for compatibility. I could have told her that; the boy is impossible.

Then again, her father and I get only 34 percent and we have been living in sin/wedded bliss/detente ever since the plane crash.  Newspaper editors didn't have matchmaking cell phones back in those days, they just threw people together in whatever unlucky combination they happened to be standing around the police scanner.  

The criteria are a little hazy and it's all done by text message, but the girl and her posse of 12-year-old romantics are sold.  They enter pairs of names over and over again to find their seventh-grade soulmates, who ideally, must look as much like Justin Bieber as possible. At the very least he must have long bangs. 

Finally, the girl who owes her existence to a couple of 34-percenters and a case of pilot error scores a 99 with somebody who apparently rates very high on the Bieber scale. There is much shrieking and celebration.

You'd have to be a complete killjoy to question the methodology of a system that has produced this kind of happiness. But I have to know. Have the girls tried to spot a pattern? What makes a couple a near perfect match?

The girl has given this some thought. "It's the hair," she says. She is not even kidding.

Related adventures: Girls' body art leaves sixth-grader Joseph Borowski confused, hopeful, Junior high party syndicate a growing threat to parents' sanity

Comments

[Executive Suburbanite]

Seems not so different from the mental checklist Mr. Executive had when sizing up potential soulmates. You can guess what was Nos. 1 and 2 on the list.

[MommyTime]

Duh. Of course it's the hair. Didn't Matt Kendall have the nicest hair in the fifth grade? Wasn't it glossy black, thick, and arrayed in the absolute most perfect wings imaginable? What else did one need to know about him really? He was desire personified thanks to that hair.

[Sue]

Hair as the main factor goes back at least as far as the Beatles, but probably not before that, when lots of Brylcreem was involved. Before Brylcreem I think it was bear grease, not sure.
You might mention to your daughter that George turned out way better-looking than Paul in the long run, so cute at a young age doesn't always pan out. I'm sure she'll appreciate the observation.

[foolery]

Justin what now? (she asks trying to believe her own bullsh*t)