What'd I Say?

 Can I take you out to dinner?

Would you like to go for coffee sometime?

How about a ride in my car?

Opening salvos in a courtship process I never fully understood. I certainly had my fill of them from the hours upon hours of television and movies I watched in which dating took place. Successfully or unsuccessfully, I had a storehouse of options at my disposal. From Rick Blaine to Lloyd Christmas, my head swam with opportunities and time-tested lines that would hopefully put me in the driver's seat when it came to getting the girl. 

Well, guess what? 

I'll tell you what: None of those approaches worked for me. I did not possess the "killer instinct" when it came time to sidle up to some fair lass and let her know what was in my heart. In this way I fulfilled yet another time-honored trope: The Strike-Out King. And not like Nolan Ryan, either. 

As my thirtieth birthday approached, I had begun to make plans for a celebration of my singleness. I was going to make a big fuss about how I was going to be just fine alone and that was just fine even though all my friends seemed to be pairing off and finding true love and living stories that looked from my perspective like "happily ever after." 

Then somewhere in there came a carom shot that changed my life once and for all. Smack in the middle of that big fuss I was making about being "just good friends" with the planet, a door opened. Not because of some slick line I was able to summon at just the right moment. It was because of a willingness to be the person I was and to speak my own truth when the moment to leap finally arrived. Improvisation, as it turned out, was infinitely more important than prepared speeches that lived in my mind for all those years. 

Now, some thirty five years after the fact, I dredge up those speeches as an exercise in sentimentality. I have a place for all those monologues that were going to be the start of my love resume. Now they are references, footnotes to the words and moments spoken in real life. Which is fine, because we'll always have Paris.