I’ve dated one woman who has had a child.
And as a single man, I can’t understand how people with children can, um, ‘talk’ to each other with a clear conscience while children are in the house.
Case in point: The aforementioned young lady and I were at her place one evening watching a movie. She had since put her young son to bed.
Her son was a cute kid: precocious and well-mannered, and I think he showed me every Spider Man toy and accessory ever created.
The young lady and I were watching the movie in the living room, when she turned to me and said, “Let’s go talk.”
She might as well have asked me to rob the local Savings & Loan. “We can’t just be talking with your son in here,” I said.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “He’s probably asleep. We just have to talk quietly.”
The word ‘probably’ had never seemed so inadequate. “Shoooot, you know me,” I said. “When I start talking, I’m talking–I’m worried about you keeping your composure while we’re talking.”
After she stopped laughing, she grabbed my hand. “Come on, it’ll be alright.”
I followed her down the hallway and we tip-toed past her son’s room.
Mind you, we had talked a few times prior but we always talked at my place. And my place was made for talking: you could talk here, you could talk there, you could talk wherever and whenever the mood struck you.
Her house was nice, but it wasn’t a huge place and the rooms were pretty close together.
We made it to her room and were leading up to the ‘conversation—and I was paranoid.
At the slightest disturbance, I looked around the room like, “What’s that … who’s there? Show yourself.”
The young lady said, “Boy, stop playing and start talking.”
I wasn’t playing; I was serious. I didn’t want to get caught talking and I imagined neither did she.
“What’s wrong,” she said. “You don’t want to talk?”
“I always want to talk. I just need some time to form a ‘sentence.’”
After a bit of concentration, I got my thoughts together–and we were ‘talking.’
The talk was calm and polite at first but then she really got into the conversation. “Talk to me,” she said.
“I’m talking to you,” I said.
“No, talk to me.”
“I’m talking to you.”
“No … talk to me!”
“I’m talking to you!”
“Talk … to … me!”
“I’m talking … to … you!”
Our back-and-forth went on until we finished talking and had nothing else to say (me, at least for an hour afterward).
As we were in our post-conversational state, there was a knock at the door, “Mommy, can I come in?”
I panicked, thinking there were going to be two traumatized people in the house. But it was obvious the young lady wouldn’t be one of them.
She was calm as she got up and walked to the door like no talking had gone on, “What is it?” she said.
“Mommy, can I have some juice?”
“No, it’s too late for juice,” she said. “Go back to bed and you can have some in the morning.”
“Okay.”
And that was it.
I was baffled. I was certain our ‘talking’ had gotten out of hand and we were caught–but somehow she knew we weren’t.
She closed the door and the rest of the night was pretty uneventful.
I left about an hour later and we spoke on the phone the next day like nothing had happened. She said nothing about almost getting caught talking and neither did I.
That was my first and only occasion ‘talking’ under those circumstances. For the remainder of that relationship, we ‘talked’ at my place and played Scrabble at hers.
Lesson learned: Use your ‘inside voice’ when you’re inside some–situations.
