The Death of Resolutions

My resolution to worry less lasted exactly one hour and forty-three minutes, or until some complete stranger wrote down his contact information and told me I should get in touch if I was interested. I stuffed his e-mail in my pocket and made swift exit from the computer lab, before my brain kicked in again and I reflected on the situation. Now, this is a rare enough occurrence in my life, since my default expression is less “flirty” and more “twitchy,” but I still have a protocol for such situations:

• 1. Assess the situation: Does the dude look creepy or unhinged? If so, make swift exit or else camouflage self as metro seat or post-office box. If not, assess the dude.
• 2. Control for likely scenarios:
• Dude senses my weaknesses, assumes he can use me
• Response: glare
• Dude is probably playing a joke on me
• Likely situation in high school
• Response: glare to the corner
• Dude is delusional
• Response: grimace, nod in kindly fashion
• Dude is trying to lure me into cult/weird club
• Response: 1. Smile kindly
• 2. Think of potential horrors (Scientology, Neo-Nazis, Lithuanian folk dance)
• 3. Glare
• 3. If neither scenario seems likely, initiate contact from a pay phone using a voice scrambler; run background and credit check

Unsurprisingly, I’ve never made it to step three. This specimen seemed to be within my age range, which can only mean things are looking up. Until then, I had been huge with the “Old Man Buying Oka Cheese at the Grocery Store” and the “Random Middle-Aged Arabic Guy on the Street” demographics. I still pegged him as a one and chose not to get in touch with him. My kindly neighbour Athena says that I passed up the chance for some perfectly good casual sex, and that the only reason I chickened out was because I’m too comfortable complaining. I don’t know about the latter, but I still think I only passed up the chance to be the floating elbow and skull in some stew pot. I do wish that I could have the normal person response to this, which would be to be flattered but uninterested. My crimelibrary.com addiction keeps on getting in the way though.