Flirt

I often joke that my daughters were born winking at the doctor. That’s not too far from the truth; they are all born flirts. No surprises there, as both respective fathers are terrible flirts, and of course, I am their mother. The poor things never stood a chance.

Still, I sometimes wonder why I am such a flirt. It’s been pointed out to me before, that I tend to take on a different tone of voice when I’m speaking to men as opposed to women. (The fact that I don’t differentiate between attached and non-attached men when using said voice, can sometimes cause a little tension.) Sometimes, I catch myself saying something that could be interpreted the wrong way (or the right way, to my chagrin) and finding myself unable to back out of saying it. Take last night.

There is a very attractive guy in one of my classes, and somehow, somewhere along the way this semester, we’ve wound up sitting together, and working together in small-group assignments. Last night, however, was the first time it was a partner assignment. Just me and him, sitting together and talking about our respective projects. Mine, of course, has a military component to it, and he said something along the lines of, “I think I remember you saying your husband is in the military, right?” I quickly corrected that I have many friends in the military, but my “husband” is only my husband on a technicality, and he’s definitely NOT military material. Actually, my first statement was that my husband was irrelevant. I can’t bring myself to lie and say I’m not married, since legally, I am. Still, “irrelevant” tends to sound like I’m just unhappy in my marriage, as opposed to being out of it, for all practical purposes, for almost 8 years. So as I’m tripping over my words to correct and explain, I realize that I must sound like I’m trying desperately to convey my single-ness. (Which, you may recall, is also not the-truth-and-nothing-but-the-truth.) So. Remove foot from mouth, and lead the conversation back to the task at hand.

I am also one of those people who has a soundtrack to my life, and always has songs running through my head. This time, the one I was thinking of was one I’d heard several times during the day, because my Windows Media Player just kept bringing it up on the random shuffle. I made the comment, as I have often in other situations, that it’s difficult to concentrate on anything when there’s a song running through your head. Even as I heard the words coming out of my mouth, I was cringing inside. Because of course, the natural response to a statement like that is, “What song is that?” And of course, that was his response as well. I blushed, said it was an old song and he’d probably never even heard it, and then, mumbling at how it might have come across, said, “Kiss You All Over.” I mean really... honestly… if a man made a comment about having a song on his mind, and then said that was the name of the song, I would think it was a clumsy attempt at a come-on. Hopefully, though, the ensuing conversation about music deflected that. And I found out we like some of the same stuff, so there ya go.

I also resisted commenting on just how beautiful his eyes are, so I think I’m okay.

Now if I can just keep myself from, accidentally-on-purpose mentioning to him that I have a blog, he will never read this, and then might never know what a total hottie babe I think he is.