Waiting room romance? No thanks.

A couple quick updates and one story.

My car is up and running again--4 working tires, which turns out to be rather important. Also, Paul had his first appointment for services up here, and we're in business. No housing yet, but he's on the roll for psychiatric and social services up here, which is a real blessing.

So, I'm sitting in the waiting room quietly (re)reading Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass while Paul is being seen. A man and his son come in. We had run into each other before when I had been in the back talking to Paul's social worker (who also happened to be an Episcopal priest!). Anyway, I'm reading and I hear the dad telling the son something to the effect of "If she smiles, she's married, but if she doesn't look up from the book she's single." Actually, though, it was low enough, and accented enough, and I hadn't really been paying attention because I really was reading, that I didn't really hear well enough to get the whole "code." But basically, I ignored it.

The boy was probably 10. They were Hispanic, so he had this beautiful brown skin but then also striking green eyes (I thought: Harry Potter meets A-rod). He did something a little loud and then suddenly the dad says "You see, it's because you're bad like that that women ignore me. They want to go out with me but then they see you do things like that and then they won't even talk to me, just keep reading their books, because why would they want to go out with a man with such a bad son?" Then, to me: "Excuse me, if you weren't married, would you go out with a man with such a bad son?"

Well, now I had to respond: "I'm sure he's a good boy."

"But you're married, right?"

And I'm thinking: just tell the lie. It's easy. Make something up. Tell a story. "No, actually I'm not." (Do you sense the "almost virtuous" theme here again? Virtuous enough to tell the truth, but not virtuous enough to refuse to consider the lie. Vicious enough to sit there through the rest of the conversation thinking that I could be reading instead if I'd just told that little lie.)

"Do you have a boyfriend?"
"No."
"Weren't you with a man before?"
"That was my brother."
"Why don't you have a boyfriend?"

Ugh. We got through vague references to my being too busy for a social life before we moved on to his own story of disability (having been hit by a bullet intended for someone else, though in what particular situation, he didn't mention and I didn't ask), his health having been made worse by ill-treatment from "state doctors," as his inability to sleep since the whole ordeal began.

Then I was saved by Paul's return with the nurse.

I had been so afraid that he would actually ask me out. Never say never, but, unless something rather extraordinary happens, I don't foresee myself going out with anyone I meet in the waiting room at a county mental health center. In a way that sounds obnoxious, because of course I was someone in such a place myself yesterday, and can think of at least 2 occasions in the next 2 weeks when I will find myself there again. But there it is.