MF seeks MF to become BFF

I've been browsing the personals on craigslist and I feel kind of strange doing it.

Here are two that caught my eye:

"Looking for tennis partner. Moderate skill level."

and

"I'm a young married woman looking for girls in their mid-20s to hang out with evenings."

Why am I looking at the personals? Here's the problem: I have no friends. Well, at least I have no friends that live within a 5 or 10 minute drive. Or heck, even a 50 minute drive. (Yes, of course, I have Jeff and he is the greatest friend I could have, but I'm talking girlfriends here)

Those two ads caught my eye because I'm looking for a tennis partner of moderate skill level and I'm looking for girls to hang out with that are young and fun. But, I'm a little reluctant. And a little bit shy and a little bit wary and a little bit chicken...

Here are some facts about living in Flint:
1. We have a beautiful house that we feel lucky to have every single day.
2. We enjoy our jobs.
3. There is no one my age that lives here. I'm not kidding.

I don't know. It feels a little desperate to answer an ad; besides, you never know what you're going to get. (I answered an ad once for a roommate in college and that turned out disastrously...)

Earlier this year, one of the girls in my top flute quartet told me "You're just as nerdy as my chemistry teacher!" My reply: "Really? Is she my age? We could probably be friends."

Recently I asked one of my adult students who's in her mid-40s about how I could meet people my age in the area. She suggested I have a kid and join a playgroup. Um, no.

It was so easy in grad school to find people of like interests and who shared similar ideas about what constituted a good time. The hard part was finding the time to actually hang out. Ah, those were the good ol' days.

So maybe I'll keep looking at the ads and who knows, I might answer one. After all, it's only tennis.