Don’t you just love the movie “Harold and Maude”? It’s seriously one of my favorite movies, and I’ve watched it countless times since I was a kid. The plot is so delicious, the characters are so rich, and that Cat Stevens soundtrack just about breaks my heart. The way Harold’s first love collides with Maude’s last love is tangible and acutely painful, much like the sting of cupid’s sharp little arrow, cutting deep and opening hearts wide. It’s a total classic.

Now, while I can honestly hope that at age seventy-nine I might be something of a free spirit bad ass like Maude, I also know that I could never then – or now – date a Harold, simply because of the age difference. I understand the older woman / younger man paradigm. Isn’t that how Stella got her groove back? Didn’t Annie Savoy just love a young baller? And oh, that sexy, seductive and stylish Mrs. Robinson! But I am not a Mrs. Robinson, or an Annie, a Stella, or even a Maude. I am Rebecca, and as I put in my “you should message me if” portion of my OkCupid profile, I only want to date you if you are within five years of my age.

The twenty year old dudes on OKCupid, however, seemed to skip right over that part.

“I’m an old soul,” wrote one 26 year old from San Mateo.

“I’m a real man where it counts,” wrote the 25 year old from San Francisco, and I had the urge to write him back and ask him, “You mean in, like, your bank account?”

But the most horrifying message I received was from a young man whose profile said he was a mere twenty years old. He wrote that he was actually twenty seven. But I thought he was lying. I thought this because I was certain I recognized him as the son of a woman I considered a friend.  Not a close confident, but we had friends in common, and we were friends on Facebook, and several times I had attended parties at her house. So if I were to see her out, or at the grocery store, we would definitely have a nice conversation, one that would not include the question, “Is your teenaged son dating anyone?”

He had written to me, that while we weren’t close in age, real maturity could never be based on age, and that he would bet that I must know a lot of men my age who weren’t really mature. True dat, I thought. I could think of several men my age who were total assholes, but that didn’t make me want to date a teenager slightly more than a year out of high school. He concluded his message with the certainly that his life experience made up for his actual amount of years alive, and that I was “totally gorgeous.”

Reading his message made me feel wrong and dirty in a thousand different ways. There were no visions in my head of the empowered Maudes and Stellas and Annies and Mrs. Robinsons in all of their glory with their young (yet certainly over 21) men and soaring musical soundtracks. Instead I was consumed with cringeworthy scenes of the seriously BAD movies of this older woman / younger men genre. Seriously crass movies like “My Tutor”  and “Private Lessons” and my personal Brat Pack 80’s favorite, “Class” in which Jacqueline Bisset actually ended up in a mental hospital after her affair with the young Andrew McCarthy.

Yeah. I felt icky. But I also felt this odd sensation that I needed to be a 100% sure that this was really the son of someone I knew. Why? I don’t know why. I just wanted to know.

So I wrote him back and asked him his name. Nothing coy. Just a simple, “What is your name?”

He responded with a name I did not recognize, and I was perplexed. Perhaps all the young kids just looked alike these days? Maybe he was using a fake name? I decided to answer my questions by doing a little simple old fashioned Facebook stalking. I looked up my friend’s profile, scrolled though her photographs, came across one of her son and studied it intently.

Yep. Same guy. Fake name. Fake age. Oh my.

While I was stalking he sent me another message. “I feel like we could have a great time,” he wrote, “and besides, you don’t look your age and I can grow a beard. What do you think? Exchange numbers?”

I wrote back, “I think no. You’re young enough to be my son.”

And say hello to your mother for me.