It is with a heavy heart that I must inform all of you, my dear readers, that things did not work out with Nhelyn and I. It turns out she was a spammer and not a woman interested in having me as a companion.

How did I find out?

Well, before I could e-mail her, as she had requested, I received another e-mail from the same address. This one was from the “The MSN Microsoft Corporation Seasonal Award Cash Grant” congratulating me for being one of twenty recipients of a $2.5 million prize.

So, on the downside, Nhelyn isn’t “the one.”

On the upside, it appears I am now a millionaire. Which is nice.

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I’m an optimist at heart, but there are some days where I think life would be much simpler if I embraced being single and stopped “looking.”

Could today be the day “Miss Right” bumps into me rounding a corner or texts/e-mails me out of the blue? Perhaps, but it’s more likely today will not be that day. Or tomorrow. Or the day after.

I’ve always believed God created someone for each of us. But what if that isn’t true? What if some of us are meant to be alone?

Last month, a friend told me about three female friends in their 40s/50s who have yet to find someone. These are good, kind, Christian women. They want and deserve someone, but it hasn’t yet happened for them.

Am I destined for a similar fate?

I try not to dwell on such thoughts, but sometimes they are the 800-pound elephants in the room you can’t ignore. You can throw peanuts at them or put Dumbo into the DVD player to placate them, but you can’t ignore them.

(I have no idea what the above means either. I was just on a roll and went with it.)

So, optimist that I am, I think it’s high time I looked at the upside of “single.”

1) Better Sleep

Studies suggest married men live longer than single ones, but I believe I would be an exception to that rule.

As I’ve discussed before, I tend to have difficulty falling asleep. A wife who snores or moves around a lot in her sleep would cause me to, by my own estimation, lose approximately 82,057 hours of sleep during my lifetime.

If I’m not sleeping well, I won’t have the energy to stay active and exercise. So, I’d be sleep deprived and physically unfit. Plus, as tired as I would be, the odds are pretty decent I would do something stupid like try to make toast while in the shower (thereby electrocuting myself) or thinking a red light was green (thereby getting run over by a semi-truck).

In short, being single means I get to be alive longer.

2) No Disney World

As a teenager, I loathed Disney World.

The lines are long, it’s incredibly hot, and everything is too expensive. (Yes, I was frugal even as a teen.)

When you’re a parent, taking your kids, at least once, to Disney World is a requirement. It says so it the parenting handbook.

So, if I never marry and never have children, I never have to go to Disney World.

You can’t put a price on that.

3) Mo’ Money

Kids are expensive.

According to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, it costs a quarter of a million dollars to raise a child from birth through age 17.

Just imagine if you have two or three kids!

If I stay single, think of all the money I will be able to save.

Add it All Together

There are other pros I could list, but this is a good starting point.

Just think of it.

I stop looking for someone and instead focus on accumulating wealth and staying healthy.

In 50 years, I will be rich and fit, and there will be thousands of eligible widows for the taking.

I could have my pick of the litter.

Seriously, who would be my competition?

I would have no relationship baggage. The other old geezers will have had been through divorces and/or the death of their own spouses. They will have grown children and grandchildren.

But not me.

I would be able to walk up to some hot, young 72-year-old lady and say:

“Baby, I’ve waited my entire life for you. I’ve never married, I have no children or grandchildren who will despise you for not being their ‘real’ mother or grandmother, and I have enough money in the bank to buy you all the denture cream and ‘Murder She Wrote’ DVDs your heart could ever desire.”

What old geezer could compete with that? Seriously.

And then, in my 80s, I could finally settle down and get married. And, best of all, none of my previous concerns would be an issue.

Sleep?

At that age, odds are neither of us would want a physical relationship. So, there really would be no point in sharing a bed. We each could have our own bed, so she could kick and move around all she wants. It wouldn’t bother me. And since, at that age, I’ll probably be hard of hearing, her snoring won’t bother me in the least.

Disney World?

At that age, neither of us could possibly be expected to take her grandchildren or greatgrandchildren to Disney World. And if she wanted, for some inexplicable reason, to go to Disney World, I could just tell her:

“We went last week, remember?”

Money?

Well, by this time there will really be no need for me to worry about spending money. One, I will have plenty of it to last me the rest of my days. And two, I will have no children or grandchildren angling for an inheritance.

What about her children, you ask? No way will they get a penny of “The Kev Fortune.” I haven’t yet met them (plus they haven’t yet been born), but I’m pretty sure I will dislike them.

In Closing

I’m not ready to give up yet. The pessimistic nature of this blog post aside, I truly do believe “she” is out there and I won’t have to wait until I’m a senior citizen to find her.

But if I do, at least it means I’ll never again have to go to Disney World.