… and it was agonisingly awkward.

There was a girl in my shop with (presumably) her parents. She was maybe 18-24, I’m useless with guessing ages, and had bright blue hair (and for the record, I am quite a fan of bright, dyed hair). Anyway, she sort of shot me a few smiles, and I shot a few back in that customer/shop assistant kind of way, and after a very small chat with the lady I assumed to be her mother that she sort of joined in with, they left.

Cut to two hours later, and the phone rings.

It turns out that she googled the name of the shop to find the number to call me, and the second I heard the words ‘This may seem really random, but…’, I already felt so guilty for the entire conversation as it immediately played out in my head.

She said she thought I was awesome and really intelligent (which was weird, because we didn’t exactly discuss Voltaire), and wanted to know if I’d like to go out with her sometime, to which I obviously had to apologise, and tell her that I was ‘otherwise engaged’.

The thing that sucks is that while a lot of people would be flattered by this, I just immediately feel guilty. It used to happen quite a lot when I was working as a barman, and I hate it; mostly because I know the courage it can take for a shy person to ask someone out. I’ve only done it once in my life, and was given the good old ‘I really like you, but I’m waiting to see if the asshole that I know is just using me is going to turn out to be a decent guy.’

As a side note: He didn’t.

Anyway, the disappointment in that girl’s voice when I told her I was in a relationship was utterly brutal. She just said ‘Oh, yeah… of course you would be…’ in a voice reminiscent of that of a small boy from a very poor family being told that Santa won’t be able to bring him any presents this year.

Wait, that doesn’t make it sound like I think I mean as much to her as Christmas does to a kid, does it? Uh, I just meant that she sounded super embarrassed and upset.

Whatever.

Anyway, yeah. That was my thing of the day.