No, I was blandly serious, and she knew it.
Did you ask her to go to something that was not her idea of a good time?
Nope.
Is the exact phrasing of her question relevant?
Is the exact phrasing of your reply relevant?
Did your reply mention your ex?
All these years later, I can’t even recall the exact phrasing. So, no, I don’t suppose it turns on wordplay; things would’ve presumably played out the same way with, uh, synonyms all around.
Well. she indirectly referenced my ex: by pointing out that said ex and I had, well, just broken up, or else it wouldn’t make a ton of sense to talk about me going out on a date with anyone else.
And, carrying on with the indirectness, I replied by likewise referencing the breakup without actually mentioning the ex.
Did she ask in such a way that she meant a date with her and you didn’t take it that way?
(e.g. “Are you ready to date?” “No”)
She wasn’t asking in general terms, or hypothetical ones; she, in particular, was making clear to this here guy in particular that, if I’d like to go on “a date” at a particular time of my choosing, on a particular day of my choosing, then it was understood that a direct result of me accepting would involve then narrowing things down to a specific set of particulars — because if ‘dinner and a movie’ was going to be the particular date, well, that’d presumably require selecting a particular restaurant and a particular film to be enjoyed with the particular young woman who, I was being told right then, had been wanting to go out with me for a while.
Communication issue such as different language or sign language misinterpretation?
Nope.
Any chance for the answer?
Yeah, in retrospect I gave a literally truthful answer to @Sigene in hopes of keeping things going just a little longer; it didn’t occur to me that it’d kill the thread! So, mea culpa, and maybe Sigene should take it.
Anyhow: playing matchmaker, she said that a friend of hers was crazy about me, and that — as I was no longer seeing someone — if I’d like to go out on a date, just name the time and place.
I turned her down. A month went by. Another month went by. A third month went by. Eventually, I got around to asking her about it.
“IT WAS ME, YOU IDIOT,” she explained.
From a Nancy daily comic, August of 1956:
In the first frame Nancy is grousing because she has picked some nuts at the park, but they are too hard to crack. In the second frame she smacks the nuts with a hammer. No luck. In the third frame Nancy is smiling and pouring her bag of nuts into a box. “This will work.” She says.
In the last frame we see that Nancy has written something on the box. We also see why. So what has Nancy written on the box, and why?
Did it solve the problem by getting other people to crack the nuts?
Did she write her home address on the box and send it by USPS, knowing that
it was likely to arrive broken ?
Holy crap! Got it. She wrote “Fragile” and mailed it too herself. Impressive.
How did that help? Is the joke that the postal system handles all fragile things badly?
Yes. While the postal service may not have that reputation now, in the 1950’s (so I am told) this was a thing.
I wasn’t being entirely serious !