I used to try a lot harder. Yesterday I scrolled through a bunch of old e-mails between Jason and me from when we first met and through much of our time dating (yes, I saved them ALL. Call me a packrat. Call me a dork). Maybe he didn’t catch on, but even from scanning the subject lines I remember that I was flirting with him, often trying to be clever or to reference something he might think was cool—from song titles or lyrics (especially Cure songs)

The old man is snoring
When hip hop drove the big cars
Friday, I’m in love
For dancing like you don’t hear the beat
Watch the walls instead
Life goes easy on me
Wish it were a Sunday

to Buffy or Freaks and Geeks references

Smooches and Mooches
Just another Tuesday night in Sunnydale

to movie quotes

Maaannnniiiiii!
A football is round, a game lasts ninety minutes
Those racecar yia-yias.

I was always trying to think of something that might make him intrigued (not that he wouldn’t have opened the e-mail anyway, but, you know, it added a little something, I thought). And, yeah, the conversations we started in those e-mails were pretty interesting as well. These days, if I e-mail Jason at all, it’s usually with a yawner of a subject line with the potential to get caught in a spam filter:

an e-mail
your message
trees 1
trees2
dress?
font

I feel like I’ve let myself go—gotten old, gotten boring. That said, one of the nice things about being married is that we no longer conduct most of our conversations over e-mail. Then again, it’s a slippery slope—get boring with e-mail subject lines, slack on the content of said e-mails, and the next thing you know all our communication is equally mundane: what did Simon eat today? How much did he poop? Oh wait.