Who’s on First?

One of the great advantages of having a significant other, is that they are an easy go-to reason to turn down anyone who might want your phone number and/or to go on a date with you.

Not that anyone owes anyone else an explanation for rejection after just having met. I should really just learn to smile and say a firm, “No thanks!” but I just get way too chatty and nervous for that, and I’d rather not lie, even to a stranger. 

I just have a hard time coming up with a polite way to say “Yeah, I’ve really enjoyed talking with you too…just not enough to care if I ever do it again in my life,” especially when I’ve been blind-sided.

And often my incurable optimism pipes up and convinces me that maybe the person in question will win me over, given a chance.

Consequently, I occasionally wind up giving my phone number to people, who, while perfectly nice, I am not terribly excited about hearing from.

This happened recently, and when the gentleman in question contacted me, I decided to nip things in the bud, by telling him that while it was nice to meet him, I was actually seeing someone and was waiting to see if we were going to make things exclusive. I told him I would give him a shout if my situation changed.

It was close enough to the truth and walked a nice line between polite and firm.

He seemed to accept that and said that he’d leave the ball in my court.

Perfect.

I breathed a quick sigh of relief and moved on.

However, two weeks later, wouldn’t you know there was a new text from him, asking to get together with me the following weekend.

While I guess I admire his persistence, I was left with some questions:

If the ball was in my court, what exactly did he just lob my way?

Was there another ball in another court he just went and nabbed? How the heck many balls are there? Did he sneak into my court and steal my ball? That’s got to be against regulations.

And what sport is it we’re playing, exactly?

In the end, I decided it was dodgeball and left it at that.