Currently Chasing: The reply button

“So what kind of guy are you?” I asked him.

“I’ve never given it much thought,” he said. “Simple reasoning is that most people won’t listen to start with.”

I was intrigued by this conversation. It was ironic to hear a guy say the same things I myself have said so many times over. That it doesn’t matter what kind of person you are, or even what kind of person you say you are. People have already made up their minds about you.

So I asked him, “Does it surprise you that I’m interested?”

He said, “No, not at all. I noticed that you couldn’t stop smiling when we spoke.”

I said, “Haven’t you noticed that I don’t stop smiling … ever.”

He said, “People who smile all the time are usually the ones constantly looking for a reason to smile.”

What a concept. I smile 24 hours a day, and spend just as long searching for something to actually smile about. That may explain why I’m not content. I’m always hoping something will come around that will actually make me happy, instead of just making me smile.

I decided not to write back right away. Turns out I didn’t need to. The empty inbox was enough to make him write again.

“Don’t run from my understanding of you,” he writes. “You are too old for that.”

I again decided not to write back.

But I couldn’t help but think about his statement. It reminded me of a conversation I had with a local Afghan boy just days prior. (And yes, I actually sat down with a very smart 11-year-old local and had a conversation with him. About, of all things, marriage!)

He said, Ma’am, are you married? I said no. He said, how old are you? I said 34. He said, wow, 34 and no marriage? You need marriage. I said, In America you don’t need marriage. He said, yes, you always need marriage. I said, are you going to marry me? He said, ma’am, you are big and I am small. No marriage for us. So then I asked him for his name and began to enter the letters in my iphone. He saw a picture of my daughter as my screensaver and said, who is that girl? I said, that’s my daughter. He said, you have daughter and no marriage? I said, I used to have marriage. He said, so your husband died? I thought about that statement for a minute. And although I didn’t want to lie to him, I was also embarrassed by the truth. In his culture Marriage is sacred. And in ours it’s disposable. So I said, yes. He seemed happy with that and left it alone.

My birthday is in a few days. Just a reminder that I’m older. Too old to run from people’s understanding of me, and too old to be running alone. I think maybe I should write him back.