Loose Change - Date #9

I feel guilty. Date #9 emailed last week asking if I wanted to go out again, and I still haven't answered.

If a man did that to me, you can bet I'd be blasting him as a self-centered bum, unworthy of my attention. Yet here I am, acting equally bum-like, but unable to email this fellow back.

I don't know why except to say that our whole encounter was...strange. Where he chose to lunch - at a grimy sandwich counter with plastic tables, where we were the only two customers. How he paid for our tuna subs - with a handful of coins. The vaporous way he explained the end of his marriage - it just drifted off. Not to mention how he was always touching my arm, even though each time he did, I'd inch my chair further from his reach.

So why don't I just write back and say, no thanks, I don't think we're a match? The only think I can figure is that he reminds me too much of...myself.

Ask my son, and he'll tell you outright that we've eaten in any number of dives, although I like to think of them as authentic, down-home kind of spots. Just the other week, the two of us went to the ice cream store and I paid for the cones with the loose change I'd been saving in a bottle. Any of my friends will tell you that I'm touchy. And in my twenties, I ended a relationship for no reason other than the fact that the guy had written me a letter on a paper towel.

Yes, the only way to become spiritually healthy and strong is to look inside yourself. And I try to, a lot. But today, call me a chicken. Cluck cluck.