Things that make you go "hmmm."

We sing a lot in our office. Actually we turn everything into a song or a line from a song. And just this morning, my colleague sang “Things that make you go hmmm,” which inspired my first blog entry…

I find myself saying “hmmm” quite often in my encounters with the opposite sex, especially since recently re-entering the dating world. I’ll chalk it up to my age and having been married before, but some men never cease to amaze me and make me go “hmmm, he didn’t just say that did he?’ or “hmmm, I don’t think so buddy.”

I recently was invited by my cousin, also single, to happy hour drinks and to meet one of her longtime male friends that she thought might be a “prospect” for me. I checked him out on Facebook, of course, and was feeling optimistic from the photo despite not being able to access any other info on his profile. First words out of his mouth when my cousin introduced us were “I can’t believe you got that close to gorillas.” Huh? What? I’m sure the look on my face prompted him to say “Yeah, I checked you out on Facebook and really liked all your photos from Africa.” Hmmm. Note to self – change security settings on Facebook.

Happy hour continued… and seemed to extend beyond the usual hours of a happy hour. The 3 of us co-mingled with other barflies who seemed to have been there all day judging from their first-name basis with the bartenders, wait staff, and whoever else walked by. I noticed one “gentleman” (my polite referral to someone much older than me!) had a British accent. Having lived in London for a while, I overheard the accent and made a beeline to the gentleman to strike up a conversation. I merely wanted to find out where exactly he was from. I quickly realized that this gentleman had been sipping (or gulping in his case) Patron for several hours and clearly had left his inhibitions on the bar counter. We chatted about England, and he declared he was from “somewhere you haven’t heard of – Slough.” Uh yes, I HAVE heard of it actually; that was the location for the original “The Office” series in the UK! And so it went on… our occasionally funny, but mostly slurred, banter was providing some entertainment. It continued for about 15-20 minutes until my cousin and friend were ready to pack it in for the night. Stumbling forward and dangerously close to grabbing onto me for stability, the “gentleman” proceeded to boldly shout in front of the entire bar full of patrons “So… when am I gonna see you again?”. Hmmm, really? Did he just say that? And with his outside voice?! I stammered to get any words out and knew that nothing was going to come out right. But then, the gentleman would never remember any of this is in the morning…