One of the biggest shockers is my appeal to certain men in their upper teens and early twenties. Actually, these aren't men at all; they're unsupervised Boy Scouts with Internet access.
Occasionally the messages they write me are sweet, almost innocent and I imagine Ron Howard in Happy Days asking a girl to the prom. I send them on their way with a "Thank you and I'm very flattered but . . ."
Sometimes this is enough to redirect their attention to the flat-tummied twenty-somethings with whom they belong, or on to other women old enough to be their mothers. But often they return, more aggressive, asking if I'm afraid I can't handle them. Then I write back, "Oh, don't worry about little old me. Run along now."
Some of my friends (and I like these friends), offer a flattering theory as to why this happens; that these young men have had some experience with girls and want to know what a woman is like. Sometimes these friends even call me a cougar. I like that. Cougar.
Of course we all know I'm about as cougar-y as a house cat - a timid, spayed and lazy one. I'm more likely to crawl into a man's lap and fall asleep than to use my claws for anything other than scratching dried smutch off a kid's face.
Other friends (the ones I don't particularly like because they're honest), shoot me this jaded look that says, "Seriously?" And then words like kept and credit card and sugar momma float by my wounded self.
At least twice now these kids were med students at the local university (possibly on the fence about geriatrics as a specialty) and another of them was in law school.
The law student kept writing back, obviously amused by my rejections, and trying to trip me into agreeing to "date" him. I wrote and explained that first of all, NO, and second, that I was going through a divorce and didn't want to have to explain him in court.
He came back with, "Well, don't tell them about me."
"And if they ask?"
"Then just lie."
"But I might be under oath."
"So?"
I wrote, "I'm shocked to think that you, a law student, would suggest I lie under oath."
He wrote back, "Hah-hah!"
He'd obviously been in law school a while because he had a firm grasp on how our legal system works.
Eventually he gave up, concluding that by the time he managed to talk me into anything, both of us would have teeth in a glass by the motel bed.
But what do I really do when a 22-year-old asks me out?
I politely decline while addressing him as dude, call up all my friends (except my honest ones) and flaunt it like hell.
