My wife and I enjoy watching the Catfish TV show and it got me thinking that it'd be interesting to hear of any stories you guys might have.  (Cue the Te'o jokes).  Mine's not very entertaining, but I do have one, so I'll share.

MySpace was absolutely booming when I was in high school.  Much to the enjoyment of my teenage self, it offered a handy feature that allowed you to search for all females [gender of your choice] your age [age of choice] within a 15 mile radius [distance of choice].  I think I eventually expanded to 30 miles in order to get all the Toledo 'burbs, but I digress.

MySpace and AIM were my go-to means of communicating with the ladies, particularly ones I had never met before.  I had my fair share of success with this approach, but I'll spare you those details and instead tell you about "Lindsay," the one that never was.

I believe her most-used MySpace name was Lynz369P (you see, her account was magically deleted a couple times, of course).  Of course, she was a smoke show, but really the majority of my friends list was of the same variety (very attractive girls who I had never met).  You see, if you cast a wide net, you're bound to catch something.  It worked, but sometimes you'll catch a catfish as well.

Of course it started off the way it normally started on MySpace, with picture comments of each other.  The comments were always flirtatious and the pictures were always risque (classic MySpace).  Then it developed into private messages, and eventually phone numbers being exchanged.  Lindsay and I would talk for hours at night on the phone in addition to the continued contact on MySpace.

There were signs that made me skeptical along the way, but at the end of the day I was a teenager hoping it was the real deal, so I stuck with it.  There was often times a child crying in the background.  She claimed it was her niece.  Okay, fine.  She also had a couple of "episodes" as you often hear about with Catfish.  One time she posted some suicidal-type stuff either to her AIM or MySpace and I couldn't get a hold of her.  Eventually an older woman called me on her number, claiming it was her mother and that she was looking for Lindsay, who had apparently ran away.  She was very worried and while she had me on the phone, wanted to thank me for being a great friend to Lindsay as she often mentioned me to her mother when discussing depression and how she copes, etc.  I mean this was either elaborately planned out or it was the real deal.  I'll never know for sure, but of course all signs point to catfish.  Eventually, of course, Lindsay "returned home" and gave me the run around.

Since we were still in high school and relatively far apart (she apparently moved to Cincinnati and I was in the Toledo area), we never made any attempts to meet up until I was in college visiting one of my buddies who attended UC.  By this point, Lindsay and I communicated off and on.  I made her aware that I was highly suspicious, but was still willing to meet her if she wanted to prove to me that she was the real deal.  Of course, she didn't show and had some excuse for not showing up.  That was the last straw for me, and I cut ties with her.

I did Google her phone number at the time, and it did come up with a Cincinnati area number, but I wasn't willing to pay to see the extra details like who the number was registered to.  When I first saw the show Catfish, I immediately tried to look her up again, but by this time I had a new phone (probably two or three times over) and lost her number and her MySpace profile was nonexistent, so I didn't have any pictures, either.

I will never know who Lynz369P was.