Oh Boy!

It started over a year ago. There was this very handsome guy, whom I would see almost every day walking by my office building during lunch time. After a while, we started nodding hello to each other and one day, as we were walking alongside, we introduced ourselves. The ice was broken. From there on, our hellos were voiced and supplemented by a few words, a few sentences and eventually by full paragraphs. The connection was slowly refining itself. After a few months of this enlivening exchange, while in the middle of a crosswalk, and rather unexpectedly, prince charming turned into a toad. Vociferation of outrage and disbelief burst out of his formerly tempting lips “How can you behave like that when you have a partner!” I was dumbstruck. Me? How was I behaving? Who’s partner? What? Or more eloquently: Huh?

“I don’t have a partner!” Needless to say, I almost ran to the office. That guy is completely crazy! His outburst had seized me like an electric shock. I was relating the story to a few colleagues when Linda started howling.

“I can’t believe it! This guy is just as datingly inept as you are! He was obviously trying to find out if you had a boyfriend.”

A few days later, we were both standing on opposite sidewalks waiting for the traffic light to change. When I saw him, standing still and smiling at me, I freaked out and rushed back to the office. Since then, I have bumped into him with a melting ice cream cone which bounced on his dark Armani suit. In hope of remedying the situation, my dirty napkin only managed to spread the mess from shoulder to shoulder. One afternoon, his little dog, until then pleasantly strolling along, suddenly took a bit at me and left with a chunk of my suit pants, I almost took one of his eye out on a rainy day with my umbrella, and managed to drop the entire content of a sweet foamy tall cappuccino on his leather shoes, the day he stopped me from inadvertently throwing myself into incoming traffic. I also stabbed him with a blue marker, staining his crisp white shirt, and we banged heads the day his rain coat belt got tangled with my scarf. It seems that the level of anxiety amongst us had built to an unmanageable level. For a while, we tacitly agreed to avoid each other. It was working well until recently. A few days ago I saw him walking alongside a gorgeous brunette. When he saw me, he turned around and waved, while colliding with a stop sign pole that got him a nose bleed.

Now imagine if this had blossomed into a relationship.