The family and I were at a church picnic. The kids were reliving their childhoods on the playground equipment, Wife was doing organizer stuff, and I was doing what I do best, milling around. This woman starts talking to me. I don’t recognize her, but that means nothing since I’m too self-centered and forgetful to remember everybody I know and there’s the likelihood in this crowd that, even if I really have never met her, she knows my wife so I continue to act friendly but not TOO friendly. One must maintain ones cool, after all.
The food is served and I claim a table for the family but they are all off doing something else. Fine; other people I’m pretty sure I know sit down and then that woman does, too. She make light conversation in a manner suggesting she is mildly schizophrenic but appropriately medicated and I determine that this is her first exposure to our congregation. Eventually her part of the conversation turns to dating ettiquete.
I’m slow on the uptake yet quick to draw conclusions, a fatal combination, so I quickly find ways to work my wife and chilodren into the conversation.
“Are there any nice SINGLE men in the congregation?” she asks. (Okay, maybe “single” wasn’t THAT emphasized.)
I almost sic her on a friend whose getting divorced, but decide I’m not that mean. Anyway, I’m just assuming she had any interest in me beyond being a person milling around and easily buttonholed in a group of strangers, but how could she not, devestatingly attractive as I am? Anyway, my ego had full control so, though she is not my idea of physically attractive and maybe just a little bit nuts and my more pragmatic side insists I have no idea of her real motivations, I’m sticking with primping and preening and say, “The kid’s still got it!”
