My Inadvertent Meeting with a Shadchan

On Wednesday evening, once Rosh Hashana was over, my friend who came with me to Detroit decided that while she was there, she should meet with some of the local shadchanim. Regular readers here will probably know that I am not the biggest fan of meeting random shadchanim for various reasons, mainly the fact that I don't feel that someone can get to know me (or my bashert that she plans on setting me up with) well enough in 20 minutes to have a real feel for who I am. So when my friend from Detroit started telling me about the shadchanim in Detroit, I told her that it was fine if our other friend wanted to meet with shadchans, but I wasn't really interested. Fine, no problem, phone calls started flying. Finally, a shadchan who would agree to meet my friend at 10:00 PM after Yom Tov was found. We all set out in the car, because we planned on going on some more adventures after the meeting. When we got to the shadchan's house, I came in, because I didn't see the reason for sitting in the car for an undetermined period of time. We came in, and were welcomed to the table, which was covered with a puzzle of the United States. I sat down and proceeded to affix the Southern states, which our host obviously had little knowledge of, in place. My friend was introducing herself, giving the shadchan a picture of who she was and what she was looking for. I was sitting there, putting together the puzzle, trying to stay as quiet as possible to keep the attention from falling to myself, because we were there for my friend. All of a sudden the shadchan fixes his sights on me and asks, "So, are you on the market also?" I can't lie, or ignore him, so I tell him, yes, I am dating. He begins to ask me questions about myself and what I am looking for. We end up getting in a debate about the value of secular education, discrimination against non-Jews by many Orthodox Jews, and what the term "yeshivish" means. (We also managed to play a pretty successful game of Jewish geography. For once, I didn't completely lose!) By the end of the conversation, I feel like he actually has a pretty good idea of who I am, and he thinks he might have a guy for me. (Of course, the guy happens to be busy. But whatever.) Unfortunately, they couldn't think of someone for my friend, who was the reason that we were there. It was the least painful shadchan meeting I have ever had. It hasn't changed my lack of desire to go meet the whole circuit of "professional" shadchans out there, but it was good to meet someone who actually took an interest in who I am, what I believe and what I am really about. He was nice, and thanked us for doing our hishtadlus, not making it seem like he was doing us some huge favor (which he really was). I guess there are some good shadchans out there.