Rule of thumb: if you're closer to my dad's age than mine, you're too old.

Sometimes I wonder if God is just playing a joke on me with my love life. Something along the lines of, "Well, since Carolyn's single and all, I'll just send her a few eligible young...well, I mean, um...interesting men to ask her out. Tehe. Hehehe."

I'm not kidding.

First there was the license plate incident (see #6) of a year ago, and the young kid (we're talking MAYBE 20) who told me to add him on Facebook so that he could "maybe make my day some other time" back in February. Then, after the tire rim occurrence of Saturday, I was asked to coffee this evening by a gentleman on a motorcycle.

Now, before you go thinking, "Hmm...girls do like guys on bikes," allow me to elucidate upon the matter:

I came upon this gentleman while walking Bennet. He was stopped at a green light, and waiting for the 2nd coming of Christ to cross the intersection, for all I could tell. He started talking to me, which is not all that unusual. There's something about being out with the cutest little dog in all of Texas that seems to make me approachable. So Mr. Motorcycle, who is rather old and balding and not all that attractive makes it quite clear that he's not intending to cross the road, so I do (I'm not terribly patient with lights).

But he continues to talk to me. Halfway across the street, he asks me a riddle: "How do you catch a unique rabbit?"

If I had ignored him, that would have been very rude.

And so I stopped and waited for the answer: "Unique up on it."

(Say it out loud. It makes more sense.)

Then he asked me another riddle: "What do you call a hundred rabbits in a row taking a step backwards?"

Are you ready for this?

Come on now, I had to go through it. You can join in my misery for a moment.

It's a "Receding hare line."

Har. Har. Har.

THEN Mr. Motorcycle, who had rolled around the corner and sidled his bike up to the edge of the sidewalk to tell me the answer to that last joke, said to me, "Now you might make my day," (oh, how I'm beginning to hate that line), and proceeded to ask if I was married.

I said no, and played it off. I thought he was joking. You know, the old-man-asking-a-young-girl-to-marry-him-because-it's-cute sort of thing.

No. He proceeded to then prattle on in all earnestness, telling me his name (John?), about his work (he's an electrician) and why he's here (working on the hospital repairs), and how he found this nice little place to rent just around the corner (11th & something), and Oh, wouldn't I have coffee with him sometime so he could introduce himself?

(Didn't you just do that?)

Mildly horrified, I mumbled "No thank you" and then had to repeat it louder a second time. I followed it with some excuse about how Bennet and I had to keep running, turned, and dashed up the sidewalk, praying he wasn't following me.

I didn't mean to be rude, really.

But how the devil was I supposed to respond to that?