Baggage Check

I had prepared an index card with notes to remind myself of all of the points I wanted to convey and when I sat back down I took out the card and said, “There’s something I’d like to tell you.”

You know the fellow in the yeshivah who’s single and no one can understand why?

The top bochur who gets redt tons of shidduchim who comes from a nice family and who has wonderful middos a great personality and loads of friends but still isn’t married?

That’s me. In the two years I’ve been “in the parshah” I’ve gone out with maybe ten girls. Not for lack of suggestions mind you — my mother has hundreds of résumés in her shidduch folder. The problem is that I have baggage.

What is it you’re wondering? That’s precisely the problem. Frankly it’s none of your business. It’s information that I’ll share with the right person at the right time — which my rebbeim have advised me is when a shidduch starts to get serious. I would never consider marrying someone without telling her this information. But I can’t have the information disclosed before I reach a certain point in a shidduch because then the shidduch will never get off the ground.