Chapter 1: Welcome to Tinderland. Please fasten your seatbelts!

My name is Yael, I'm 68 years old, and my daughter, Shira - who is already 28 and thinks she invented the world - claims that I'm a "cougar."

She didn't have to explain to me. The subtle irony (or thick, depending on which side of the router you're looking from) is that Shira doesn't realize that she herself is the incriminating evidence. This girl, who is condescending to me with Generation Z concepts, is effectively "Israel's first Internet baby."

She was born as a result of a stormy affair I had with Ido, a man 11 years younger than me (yes, I was a cougar when Zuckerberg was still in his mother's womb). I met Ido, of course, online.

It was in the days when the Internet consisted of black-green screens and modem noises that sounded like a cat in distress, inside the BBS, on Amos Schocken's mythical platform - Israel Online, we were pioneers.

They even did a great article about us in Maariv's "Sofshavau" shortly after she was born, something along the lines of "Love in Broadband - Israel's First Internet Baby." The address for telegrams:

Our wedding, by the way, didn't happen until Shira was 7. We flew to Cyprus not because of a budding romance, but because it was the only way to get a mortgage to buy a house. By the time Shira was 11 and a half, we were already divorced, but we remained soulmates.

After Ido, came Nadav. Surprisingly, I met him online too. It happened on the "Star is Born" forum on Ynet, somewhere in the 2000s. His nickname was "Maria Callas" and mine was "Scarlett." Yes, we liked the same characters and from there it developed into a ten-year romance.

Nadav and I didn't live together. Each of us maintained our own kingdom, our own silence, and our own TV remote, but we were together.

When he died of the damn disease at the age of 60, my world fell apart. Shira and Benzog had already moved abroad. So I was mostly left alone.

Time has passed. I decided I want one again. Not a "husband." Not someone who will ask me where his socks are. I'm looking for someone to go to the movies with, hold hands with, and analyze the political situation with. In short - a partner in crime, not a partner in property taxes.

And no, I'm not ashamed to say it out loud: I'm looking for someone who still loves to make love. Yes, you heard that right. Just because I have a senior citizen card doesn't mean my libido has taken early retirement. On the contrary, now that the girl is grown and the mortgage is over, it's just the right time.

I want someone who knows how to love, who wants to love, and who still has a sparkle in their eyes (and not just because of the cataracts). I want someone who wants to "fly through life" with me. Well, maybe not "fly" in the sense of skydiving or trekking in the Himalayas - my knees wouldn't forgive me for that, but definitely take off.

I'm looking for love, simple and burning, just like me.

I looked in the mirror.

I saw a woman who looked pretty good for her age, a strange but graceful genetic combination of collective upbringing and wild Brazilian gardens. I have a pelvis that can move (theoretically), but the work ethic of a cowgirl. Predator? The only thing I've recently devoured was an entire database on how to invest in the stock market. And steaks.

Shira installed the app for me. "Mom," she said, "this is the new world. Everyone is there." She was right about the supermarket part. But she forgot to mention that most of the goods were expired.

The motivation (or: Why am I doing this to myself?)

Let's make something clear right from the start. I'm not looking for a husband. I've had enough flings in my life. I'm looking for love, because my last one ended too soon. And that I'm just built that way. From birth.

Gallery of Horrors

In the description I wrote:

Then I started scrolling. My digital research skills became a curse. Every face that came up was immediately given an OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) check.

Here is a small sample:

Moshe, 70:

His main image is of a fish. A large, dead fish. A reverse image search on Google showed that this image appears on the website "Amateur Fishermen in Alaska" from 2014. Dear Moshe, if you start our relationship by stealing the copyright of a fish, where will we end up? To the left.

Score, "age not listed":

The picture is a selfie taken from below. My flaw detection algorithm detected nose hairs there at 4K resolution. It says "young at heart." In network code, it says: "I have no pension and I'm betting on your apartment." Left.

Boaz, 62:

Boaz looks good. Too suspicious. I flipped through the pictures. Second picture - he's on a jet ski. Third picture - he's shirtless at the gym. A quick analysis of the metadata on the pictures showed they were taken in 2010. Boaz lives in the past. I live in the cloud. Left.

It feels like walking into a human surplus store. They're all "100% Egyptian cotton" when in reality they're itchy polyester. And me? I'm sitting in my air-conditioned living room, in front of a screen, sipping tea, and feeling like a Shin Bet investigator trying to find a terrorist, only the goal is to find a hot man.

Suddenly, a beep.

"It's a Match!"

It was Gershon, 65.

In the picture he looks normal. Button-down shirt, reasonable smile. A quick search on LinkedIn brought up a profile of a retired engineer. Looks legit. No criminal records on Google. He wrote:

I waited. Shira said I should wait for the man to write. "Be hard to reach, Mom." I'm 66 years old, Shira. I'm not hard to reach, I'm hard to move from the computer when I have a stable internet connection. But I waited.

Then the message came.

"Awake?"

It was 7:30 PM.

I took a deep breath. I typed back:

Three minutes passed.

I saw the "typing" icon flash, disappear, and flash again. I thought to myself, here he is, crafting a witty reply. Maybe he was even laughing.

And then it arrived. A scroll.

"Listen to me carefully, honey. First of all, this kind of humor might have worked in the kibbutz dining room, but among civilized people it's perceived as a terrible lack of confidence. My question was legitimate to start a conversation, but you chose to attack. That's very unfeminine of you. I'm looking for a woman who knows how to accommodate, listen, and be gentle, not a woman who tries to outsmart and prove that she's smarter. The comparison between Beethoven and my country only proves how shallow you are culturally. At your age, I would expect a little more humility when a senior engineer addresses you. But apparently that's what's left in the market."

I stared at the screen.

My mouth opened, closed, and opened again. I felt my blood boiling, rising to my head and threatening to blow my brains out. "Cute"? "Unfeminine"? "Senior engineer"? I wanted to answer him. I wanted to write to him that I could teach him what a woman is and that if what's left in the market is me, then that's a sign that prices are really going up.

Just for fun. I wanted to tell him that the "softness" he was looking for was probably in the geriatric ward or with the inflatable doll he probably had hidden in the closet. But then I stopped. I took a deep breath. I blocked it.

Welcome to Tinderland, or as I call it: the digital version of Sodom and Gomorrah! Please fasten your seatbelts, make sure your WIFI is connected, and your heart protector is 100 percent charged

The journey begins.

Chapter 1: Welcome to Tinderland. Please fasten your seatbelts!