No!

I had intended to omit this story from my blog, thinking that it was the most crushing and humiliating experience of my life, but over the weekend, one of my close friends easily demonstrated that it was at the absolute worst, the 2nd or 3rd most humiliating experience of my life, so here goes:

There's a little girl that lives on my estate, who has a very beautiful, and as I far as I know, single mother. I previously rescued a shoe for the little girl. To my mingled horror and delight, the little girl and her friend hatched a brilliant (yet childishly transparent) plan to set me and the mum up on a date. I received an anonymous love letter (written by a child), the children pestered my about my correspondence, and then the friend conspiratorially told me that the letter was from Redacted's mum - a bare faced lie. The children then pestered me about whether I liked Redacted's mum and whether I would go on a date with her. When the children weren't about I visited both mums and explained what had been going on, and that I would rather not receive love letters from small children. When I was visiting the nice mum I also asked whether there was a grain of truth in their plan, and whether she would actually have liked to go on a date with me.

Her response was two syllables. The first, "Ha" was completely involuntary, and demonstrated how ridiculous she thought the idea was. The second "No" was laced with scorn, absolute authority, and the kind of exaggerated gesticulation and annunciation that you would usually save for an errant dog, a half-deaf elderly relative, or a foreign waiter. I made my excuses and left.

As if that's not bad enough, when the little girl pesters me in my garage, she now makes fun of my having asking her mum on a date, so I can only assume that her mum has been laughing about the whole thing with the little girl. I've gone off them slightly.

Richard "laughing stock" B