I’m a people watcher. I watch people and come up with back stories for them. I find it amusing. Amusing, but not always accurate.You see, while I like to believe that I am good at reading people, I have one fatal flaw – I can never decipher signals that are aimed at me.
It’s a long term issue. I remember years ago spending most of the summer with a group of friends. There was one girl in particular who was an outrageous flirt. She flirted with the guys in the group, she flirted with the guys we met up with, she flirted with the guys we passed on the street; it seemed to me that she would flirt with anything with a pulse. What irked me incredibly at the time was the fact that she never flirted with me. Not once.
I gave her every opportunity. We drank reservoirs of coffee together, walked miles of sandy coastline, took long drives through beautiful scenery, we had three hour conversations - mainly about guys and what she was looking for in one – I had become the dreaded “friend.”
Well, after a couple of months I headed off to university in Scotland and our three hour conversations became thirteen page letters (obviously this all took place before email jumped off nerds bridge into mainstream culture) I remember, having read a letter in which she described herself as an outrageous flirt, plucking up the courage to ask why she never flirted with me. The reply, a week later, was incredulous. She, I read, had spent eight solid weeks flirting with me. She had overcome a dislike of coffee, battled wind exposure on the Atlantic coastline and overdosed on travel sickness pills for three hour drives on tiny winding roads. She had described as many of my qualities as possible as the qualities she desired in a man. She had taken every opportunity she could to put her hand on my arm, brush the back of my head, stare deeply into my eyes…
I felt a bit silly.
A decade later and I still haven’t learned. One of the baristas at Starbucks left recently. I know some people who know me just sighed and raised their eyes heavenward at the mention of a barista. I am always making emotional attachments to baristas and waitresses. I think it goes back to my Tim Horton days. Anyway, on her last day working before taking a few weeks holiday before returning stateside we were chatting. She was telling me about all the things she was going to miss about Northern Ireland, she said that she was going to miss the food – how she had put on a pile of weight.
Now you know and I know that was a signal for me to tell her that she didn’t need to lose weight – actually she really didn’t. You and I both know that she was waiting for me to compliment her so we could begin trading compliments. We both know that in all the months I had been chatting with her, the fact that she had been laughing at all my attempts to be witty bore no relation to how funny she actually found me. If I asked I bet you’d be able to tell me what the prolonged eye contact and coy smiles actually meant. And you and I both know that I was completely clueless of all of this at the time.
So when she said that she had put on weight what did Mr Charming reply?
“Ah, don’t worry about it. You’ll soon lose all that.”
I know you’re sighing and shaking your head in a resigned manner – I know I am.
