There were two girls, though, who seemed almost perfect for Aidan. One began her personal profile saying something like, "I hate to laugh. I hate to go out to a movie. I also hate to stay in and watch a video." She was the anti-JDate. She was distaff Aidan! Reluctantly, he agreed to log on and just look at her. "That girl's awful!" he exclaimed. Then he looked a bit more closely.

"No, actually, she's pretty cute."

Then he looked at my second find. "All right," he said, sighing in surrender. "Maybe I'll contact those two." I explained that you can't converse with anyone on the site without paying for the service first. Unfortunately, frugal is his middle name. "Well, forget it, then," he said.

Ever since, he'd been complaining that most of his old friends didn't have time to hang out with him anymore because they had girlfriends. Two met their matches on JDate.

He also admitted that he would prefer to date a Jewish girl, if only he could find one he liked. I relayed to Aidan a friend's remark that if Jewish organizations were so eager to perpetuate the religion, then they should subsidize JDate, or maybe even PAY kids to join. "I'd be happy to join if someone paid me to," he said. To which we responded, "We'll pay!"

"No thanks," he said. "I meant someone I don't know."

It truly was my husband's impulse to sign him up without consent. I merely did the dirty work, being more Internet savvy. Now, normally, when someone says no, I take them at their word. There's no part of "No" I don't understand.

In this case, though, ignoring my son's expressed wishes was, in my mind, in no way equivalent to a college frat boy taking advantage of a girl by saying, "Her lips may be saying no, no, no, but her eyes are saying yes." Rather, I pictured him as someone who sees a pair of warm winter boots on sale in a store window and thinks, "I really need boots. There's snow everywhere, and my feet are freezing! But I hate to spend the dough. It's already mid-February. I guess I can get through the rest of the winter without them. Oh... but they're so CUTE!"

It was in the same realm as parents persuading a reluctant child to go away to summer camp or remain in college. We do these things for their own good. Someday, they'll thank us.

Aidan was far from ready to thank us for our "gift" that Sunday. But late that night, before going to bed, I logged onto JDate, just out of curiosity. We'd taken the liberty of filling in some basic information for him -- his age, what he does for a living, activities he enjoys in his spare time. I'd even downloaded a photo of him. I wondered if he'd altered these entries, or perhaps deleted the profile altogether.

Au contraire. He'd spent considerable time composing a lengthy profile essay about himself and filling in every category in their questionnaire, from his favorite kinds of food and music to what he seeks in a mate. He'd changed only one of our answers, identifying his religious affiliation as not Reform, but "culturally Jewish, but not practicing." (I wondered if he genuinely believed this, or only wanted to convey negativity.) He'd even added more photos.

OK, so his essay was a colorful, caustic diatribe about how his pushy mother, whom he compared to The Titanic, had taken the liberty of signing him onto the service without permission. Seething with sarcasm, it stated things like, "I've always wanted to be an Internet predator, but I've never known how to start." (I couldn't wait to see which girls, if any, might be attracted by lines like that.)

But if he were that annoyed about it, wouldn't he have taken his name off? Or at least waited a few days before choosing to play along?