Brown Shoes

According to the Cole Porter song, Miss Otis Regrets, the lady is saddened that she's unable to lunch because she's just gotten hauled off to the hoosegow for shooting her lover. On Saturday I regretted that I was able to lunch - and even then, it was just barely. 

Brown Shoes by Teece Aronin. Available on products at
redbubble.com/people/phylliswalter.

I have a friend I'll call F. F and I have known each other almost two years and met through the miracle of social media. Because we live roughly two hours from one another, we have communicated mostly via the Face Book game Words with Friends and texting. We did manage to meet a couple of times, one of them for dinner. Maybe you've found yourself with the same problem: you like someone, but you live so far apart that it's difficult to date like other couples. 

So back to F. One or the other of us was always dating someone else or recovering from some star-crossed stupidity into which we'd gotten sucked. 

Anyway, there we were last week, messaging back and forth, and ended up planning a date with each other. It was for yesterday. Then, in one of those, "I-have-no-idea-why-we're-texting-about-this" moments, it was decided we'd share our first kiss. He seemed enthused about the kiss and so was I. I was to drive to his house and we would go from there to a wedding reception. 

Now, I was rear-ended a few weeks ago, and my back and knees waited until recently to start collectively killing me. I've been limping, playing phone tag with my medical claims rep and having a rough time getting things done at work because of the pain. The day before the date it was almost unbearable, so I went to my doctor. I had told F that I would dance with him, but could barely get out of my car. 

"I'm going to a wedding tomorrow!" I told my doctor who wrote me a prescription for a steroid. And then it hit me that I had nothing to wear. Actually, I have very few clothes period. I think some of them are still packed from when we moved last spring. Even at work I dress very casually. So I went straight from the doctor to Marshall's where I limped my way among the racks until I came up with something nice enough for a wedding but not too dressy for work. Then I went home and collapsed. 

Three hours later, F texted to say the couple getting married hadn't received his RSVP so would I like to just meet for lunch? I was disappointed but relieved. I'd had mixed feelings about getting all dressed up and mingling with a lot of people I don't know while walking like Walter Brennan. So lunch it would be. 

That night I was feeling a little giddy about the next day, and the idea of the kiss - which in my mind had become not just the kiss, but the KISS. 

We met at the restaurant, oohed and ahhd over the pot stickers and each had a sandwich and a beer. When the bill came I asked if I could help and he said I could cover the tip if I liked, so I did that. He walked me to my car where I instantly regretted not getting to my mints beforehand. 

It occurred to me that we'd each driven more than an hour just for lunch and that maybe a first kiss in a parking lot wasn't what he'd had in mind, so I said, "I don't know what your schedule's like, but would you like to go do something else?" I was thinking a movie or a park might be a good idea.

No, he said. He had to let the dog out and a buddy was taking him out for his birthday (I had wrapped up a small birthday present for him, but forgot it at home). Then he said, "Well, I'll be seeing you," and started for his car. 

"F, would you like to kiss goodbye?" I asked.

"No, that's okay," he said, and kept walking.

I sat there for a second, a little perplexed then went after him.

"F?"

He didn't seem to have heard me and kept walking,

"Excuse me, F!" 

He turned and saw me and continued getting into his car. When I caught up to him, his car door was still open. I bent over and looked in.

"Is something wrong?" I asked.

"No, nothing's wrong."

"But you wouldn't like to kiss goodbye?"

"It's not imperative," he said, not moving except to look at me.

I straightened up, walked back to my car and got in. He was long gone before I'd even managed to get my keys in the ignition. 

I tried to keep an open mind about what just happened. We'd met before, and he had been open about his attraction to me and wanting to kiss me someday, so I didn't think it was an attraction problem. Then again, maybe it was. I started that losing battle so many of us wage in these situations, trying to think what I'd said or done to offend him. There was nothing stuck between my teeth and nothing up my nose. There were no lulls in the conversation and a lot of laughing. What happened?

Then I just felt bad and drove home. 

It's probably not fair to write about this when F and I've not talked about what happened, but for all I know, he doesn't intend to and might have no plans to discuss anything with me again. And besides, if I don't write about things like this, they pile up inside and who needs that? 

Also, F deserves the benefit of the doubt. For all I know, he chipped a tooth on a pot sticker and was too self-conscious to kiss. Or maybe he really does still like me, but didn't want the kiss to happen over his doggie bag. Or maybe the woman he'd just started dating who so far was two for three on date cancellations, texted him while I was in the ladies' room and proposed marriage. I joke, but truly, some very good reason might have occurred to him that made him change his mind.  

And like women, men have the right to change their minds and they also have the right to say no to unwanted advances. 

Imagine all the times Donald Trump must have fought women off. 

O Don't Let Me Sext When I'm Sleezy

I'm a little like the drunk who thinks he's fine to drive except that I'm the out-of-it girlfriend who thinks she's fine to text. 

Image, copyright Teece Aronin

I have a history of this kind of thing. Let's say I'm seeing a man who's on the road a lot. Invariably I'll say something like: "Text me when you get to your hotel - even if you think I'm asleep." The next day I see the text he sent at 1 a.m. then read my reply. I am absolutely mortified. 

About a year ago I was in bed with the flu when a man I was dating texted.

"What can I do to help you?" he asked - from Duluth. 

I'd been napping, was high on over-the-counter flu meds and wasn't wearing my glasses. I wrote back: "Just come on me once in a while." 

I have no idea how that happened when what I thought I wrote was, "Just check on me once in a while." Notice that some of the accidental letters in that text aren't anywhere near the intentional letters. 

There was another time when I was sleepy and sick and trying to talk to a boyfriend on the phone. Suddenly he wasn't there so I groped for the wall socket then texted to explain. I wrote: "My O just died." 

No it hadn't. My phone had just died. I was far too out of it to have had an O at that moment, but if I had, it would have just died, too. 

I'm often struck by what lovely gentlemen I've dated as not one of them pretended to notice any of the misfires including those described above. Then again, they probably wept with laughter, waved over every guy in the bar and wheezed out the words, "Look at what my passed out girlfriend just texted!" 

You know, that whole texting while sleepy thing used to embarrass me but I'm past all that. I just do my best to tap the right letter and if I happen to land anywhere within three letters of the right letter, I'm happy. 

Let men play Alan Turing to my Enigma. Let them struggle to understand me for once.

And by the way, the title of this essay is actually: Oh, Don't Let Me Text When I'm Sleepy.

I shouldn't be allowed to blog either. 

For Al-John and All the Others Like Her

For a while I did a lot of online dating. Many days as an online dater were an adventure in cat and mouse except the cats were usually VERY stupid. And most of the cats who weren't stupid were VERY creepy.

Graphic design: Teece Aronin

One day a man "liked" my profile (meaning he clicked something to indicate his interest), and when I took a closer look, he'd posted no photo of himself, listed nothing by way of personal information, and his username was AlmostNormalNow.

Then there was Seekingonereal. It took me half an hour to figure out that he was seeking one real. I couldn't imagine why he'd want to date a woman with an STD unless maybe he worked for the Health Department.

The parade continued when I spent almost a week messaging with a man before he wrote that he really wasn't ready to date someone after all. 

'Well, it was great while it never lasted,' I sighed. Two days later he texted: "Hi, Terri! How are you, gorgeous?"

"How am I?" I wrote back, "I'm not Terri, for one thing." 

There are a lot of scammers on these sites too, and most of them aren't the sharpest tools in the shed, but they are tools. Case in point: the man who messaged me whose profile said he was a "guy seeking girls." At one point, he listed his name as John, and at another time he was Al. And on top of all that, his profile said, "I'd love to meet a really great guy and settle down; some man who knows how to treat a real and honest woman like me."

Our exchange went like this:

Me: "Why does your profile say your name is Al?"

Al-John: "Because that happens to be my name, sweetheart."

Me: "Then why does it also list your name as John?"

Al-John: "Oh, because my name is Al but I sometimes go by John."

Me: "And why did your profile say you're a woman?"

Al-John: "I think I typed that without my glasses. Maybe I should wear them more often."

Me: "Maybe you should, girlfriend."

To be fair, there were times I'd stretch out on the bed in ratty sweats, my hair in rollers with three or four candy bars and a party size bag of chips. I'd be tucked into bed all cozy, messaging something like this:

"Well thank you. You seem interesting, too. And yes, of course I think you're cute. Thank you for thinking I'm cute, too. Yup, I do try to take care of myself. I feel so much healthier when I eat right."

One of the online dating hopefuls messaged me one day, and when I looked at his photos, there was one of him posing in front of the Washington Monument so that it appeared to be rising out of his trouser-fronts. 

Things finally got so bad that when a ruggedly handsome guy who had two college degrees and was working on a Masters in Divinity asked me out, my friend, Tina shouted, "Praise God!" It turned out that, in addition to worshiping God, he wanted to worship me too, just not in church. 

Sometimes I'd get a little discouraged. So many men out there did not seem to be looking for what I was. I mean, I thought I knew what I was looking for. Well, let's put it this way: I knew what I wasn't looking for; I wasn't looking for a man like Al-John.

And I definitely wasn't seekingonereal. 

My "Issue" with Keys

I have a real issue with keys. In fact, the key to many of my issues is my keys. And “issue,” as we know, is the politically correct term with which we seem to have replaced the word “problem” these days. So I’ll just say it like it is: I have a real problem with keys. I can’t find my keys, I lock my keys in the car and I lock my keys in the car with the car running. 

About the only thing I don’t seem able to do with keys is find them on the first try or without panicky rampages through my home and purse. It also seems that I require far too many self-administered pat-downs and am troubled by the fear that one day I'll enjoy the pat-downs and will resort to losing my keys on purpose so that I can justify another.

Last week I was with my son, Jon at the store. As we were leaving, I reached into my coat pocket for my keys and there was nothing there except my store receipt, three Chap Sticks and a puff of lint that didn’t even match anything that would have come from my coat.

“Huh, that’s weird,” I said. “They should be right here.” I checked my other coat pocket, came up empty, then dumped out the contents of my purse. Still I couldn’t find the keys. I peeked into the car to make sure they weren’t hanging from the ignition, but no. 

We walked back into the store and sat at the now closed-for-the-evening sandwich shop located near the store entrance. I did what women have done dating back to when we'd misplace our pelt-scrapers and dumped the purse out again. The same keys not in the purse before were not in the purse again. 

“I’ll just call AAA,” I told my son. “At least this store is open all night, so we won’t have to wait out in the cold.”

No sooner had those words come out of my mouth than an announcement came over the public address. “Attention shoppers, the store will be closing in 15 minutes . . .” Of course it was. 

Sighing heavily, I called AAA where the customer service reps actually manage to sound sorry that you’re one step closer to exhausting all your service calls and will soon have to purchase additional coverage. The rep told me that a truck would be there to assist within 50 minutes. I explained to him that I had a child with me and that the store where we were waiting was about to close, so he expedited my call. Now the driver would be there in . . . 50 minutes.

About a half-hour later, a truck pulled up and the driver rammed and jammed his way into my car. Once inside, I sweated bullets until I found the spare keys I was praying were in my satchel in the back seat. I tipped the driver with my last three bucks and drove home with my son, profoundly grateful.

When we got home, Jon and I shook off our coats, laughing about the whole thing. AAA actually was wonderful and the driver very nice. When my coat came off, I did what I often do when I’m standing up and have pockets; I shoved my hands into them – and pulled out my lost keys. I had forgotten that under my coat I was wearing a velour zip-up jacket with tiny little pockets on each side. If I hadn’t forgotten I had those pockets, I like to think I would have checked them. Unfortunately, this kind of thing is, as they say, “just like me.”  

Losing my keys always makes me think of a friend's father whose stock comment any time someone misplaces keys is: "If they were up your nose, you'd know where they are." But, of course, he doesn't say "nose."

           

And speaking of "noses," last year my ex-husband was in town on business and suggested that the kids and I meet him for dinner. So I took the kids and there we all sat over a long, leisurely dinner, followed by dessert, talking, coffee and more talking. 

When the kids and I walked to the car after dinner and it was running, my first thought was that my invisible chauffeur had started the car and was waiting in there for us. Then I remembered that I don't have an invisible chauffeur because I can't afford one. Then it dawned on me that I had left the keys in the car and that the engine had been running - for nearly ninety minutes.

Because he knows my history with cars and keys, my ex-husband vibrated with suppressed laughter. But he managed to hold himself together long enough to say he'd stick around until AAA sent someone out.

We traipsed back into the restaurant and sat on a bench, the kids next to me and my ex on the other side of the kids. I got on the phone with AAA and as I talked to the rep, a beep alerted me to an incoming text.

“Just a moment,” I said, “do you mind holding? Someone just texted me.” I took the phone away from my ear and checked the text. It read: “Ma’am, before we send a truck out, do you mind confirming that you have the jackass coverage?” Puzzled, I looked up as my ex leaned out so that I could see him past the kids – him and his phone and his uncontained glee.

A couple of years ago, a boyfriend and I were on our way out for the evening, and once again, I couldn’t seem to get my hands on my keys. The kids were right there, too, so I made this familiar announcement: “Hey everybody, listen up! I can’t find my keys! Everybody help me find my keys!”

With that naiveté found only in men, my boyfriend asked, “Why don’t you just keep them in your purse?”

“What are you, crazy?” I said. “Then I’d never be able to find them!”

The next day, he emailed me a cartoon of a mother kangaroo frantically pawing through her pouch and yelling, “He’s got to be in here somewhere!"

Sadly I admit that I left the keys in the car with it running two other times last year, and not just that evening with my ex-husband. I like to think it’s because my mind is gifted and busy and that this causes absent-mindedness. But I'm afraid it's actually something closer to the opposite.

But that’s alright; I still like myself. I’m me and that’s okay. And I provide a lot of enjoyment and a justifiable sense of superiority to all those around me. 

You can’t ask more from life than that.