"What do you do in your spare time?" I would say. And he would probably answer, but that would be irrelevant. "Uh-huh. That's cool." (It would sound interested.) "So, uh, you and I get out at the same time on wenesday." (We would...he's on overnights for while, so it won't happen, but we would in this scenario, which would be convenient.) "I don't mean like a date or anything, because, ya know, I'm engaged and all, but we should, I don't know, do something together after work. A movie, or, a store or something. We could go to Bull Moose on disagree on so much music that we both regret agreeing to go, or stick around here and play a fifty by fifty game of dots. Something."

Maybe the list would be longer. "We could go to bookland and brood over some really deep cliffnotes. Read all of 'War and Peace' in an hour." Or "You play air hockey? Wal*Mart's always fun." Or "We could both pick a group of three-syllable or higher words secretly and see who gets the other to use them all first."

Wouldn't matter what. He'd say yes-- he'd marvel at my casualty, and my great ideas, and be all too eager. This would all be going on in his head, of course, but I'd know, and I'd know further that he'd wonder why someone so confident and resourceful as me would ever want to hang out with someone like him, so I'd explain myself. "Most of my friends-- the ones I like hanging out with, anyway-- are gone for the summer, or, ya know, forever. And Zack and I are trying to arrange it so I got time for myself and other people, which keeps ending up being time for Spider Solitaire. Anyways, I thought we could have fun, or some reasonable facimile."

And, despite the fact that he works at burger king, he wouldn't be confused by the word "facimile." In the ideal scenario, he'd say "Ha! Facimile! That was the first word on my list!"

And we'd both be smiling, and laughing, and no one around would get any of it. Because they all work at Burger King.



That's how it plays out in my mind. But my mind has a lot of things playing, on and on and on, and so few of them are ever close to being accurate.

I wrote that because I kinda left everyone hanging on that second-to-last post, the one about work Ben. Being drawn to work Ben. Being drawn to the idea of being drawn to someone. Maybe that wasn't in the post, actually. Maybe it was just implied.

I'm growing to enjoy a friend of work Ben's, as well-- work Joe. Maybe it would seem less like I was hitting on either of them if I were to invite both. The one thing I don't want-- definitely DO NOT want-- is any confusion anymore about what kind of relationship I'm getting into with someone.

But it defintily would be nice to connect with someone again. Learn about someone, instead of just know everything about them. It's always nice when it starts happening, I can generally deal with it when it ends. As it always does, despite my endless optimism. I need to come to terms with that shit.

So, as a first step: My name is Linda, and I'm a chronic optimist. (Hi, Linda!) On with it.