The 26

I wound up in a conversation about the concept of The One recently. Someone brought it up and I laughed. With the side of my lip curled. It was maybe more of a sneer.

The One? Please.

Because Jaded? Is not my God-given middle name. I've worked hard for it.

I used to believe in The One. Truly I did.

But then when you spend a year with The One and it doesn't work out, you realize he wasn't actually The One. You just really really (really) wanted to be in love. You were young. You learned later he was gay.

The One, if you are a straight woman, is never going to be a gay man.

And then years go by and you meet another The One, and you figure that he is it, because it's so different than when you were 23. And then he's not it.

And then you meet The Really One. And you think, "Wow! People are right when they say you just know!" Even though for years you've scoffed at people who say, "When I met my husband I just knew."

But you think you know. Wow! You know! This must be it!

Because you know, or at any rate, at some point you just knew, you spend a number of years trying to make each other fit perfectly. Because you almost do, except for a couple things. Which is why you keep trying until you pretty much grind it into the ground.

And so that, too, ends. One? None.

And then you decide that honestly, The One is like unicorns, or world peace, or being able to eat everything you want and never exercising and fitting into size four jeans.

So the woman who was talking about The One said she'd read an article explaining that there isn't only one One for everyone. In fact, there are 26 Ones.

I don't know how they came up with this number. But she said it with a great deal of authority. And I quite like the idea.

"The thing is," she continued, "these 26 are sprinkled throughout the world. You can't count on them all being in your own country."

So I suppose that if one of yours lives in Mogadishu and you don't have a passport, well, you're down to 25. Which would be a good argument for getting out into the world.

It makes it seem like love could be lurking around every corner, doesn't it?

This led me, as one might imagine, to consider a One Hunt. And then immediately I leaped to visions of the fabulous safari-like outfits one might wear on the One Hunt. You could be all Katharine Hepburn in The African Queen, minus the boat and leeches and filth.

Ohh, there could be some fabulous outfits. And I love the idea of big glam sunglasses.

But off of the frivolous topic of outfits and back to the meat of the One Hunt. The more data-oriented among us might easily be able to design a survey. You could approach The One Hunt in a rather scientific fashion.

You know, now that I'm thinking about it, I might just work on survey questions for fun.

It would be better than online dating, in that you're coming up with all your own "this is what I need in my One" questions. Plus you'd only administer it to people you already found attractive in person, so you'd already know if you liked their smile or their mannerisms or if they had hygiene issues or wore terrible shoes or were rude to those around them.

For example.

Except for the fact that people might think you were batshit crazy if, shortly after meeting them, you handed them a questionnaire, it could be an expedient way to approach the finding of True Love: One of My 26.

You could say, "I'm just trying to save us both time and anguish." Or something of the sort.

Don't you think?