The Flirting Game

If someone told me that I wasn't an intimate person, I'd agree with them. I’m not a prude in any way, shape, or form but I’m very stiff when it comes to hugging people outside of my immediate family. It physically makes me uncomfortable, like I’m being squeezed in a steel vise or something. Even with boyfriends, I'm always stand-offish when it comes to the “public” hug. Don’t get me wrong I liked hugging my past boyfriends, but not in public.

That being said my time as a single gal is starting to worry me. I’m finding that I’m not only hug stand-offish, but I’m becoming flirt stand-offish as well. A trait I might add that I have been particularly good at in the past.

Example … Today as I’m leaving my building a handsome, distinguished (by that I mean older) gentleman made a point to smile and say hello to me as I was crossing the road. I was at first startled by this hello because it came with not only a street between us, but it was unprovoked as well because I was looking at my feet at the time. No eye contact of any kind was made and this wasn’t someone I recall having seen before. I looked up, smiled and said hello and then started to cross the street. Then came the chit-chat game.

“Well it looks like the sun has gone away, doesn’t it?” Realizing I was being addressed I once again looked up.

“Yes, it looks like it,” I said. “But I’ll bet it will be muggy this afternoon.”

“I agree,” he said back and then he smiled an amazing smile, gets into his truck which was parked next to my car as fate would have it.

As he backs his truck up he rolls down the passenger window, smiles, winks and says ciao to me. And as I drive to work I wonder. Am I becoming numb to all people of the opposite sex that I can not participate in a good game of morning flirting. Then I console myself … He was walking a little dog that he took to work with him, maybe it wasn’t flirting at all, maybe it’s been so long since I flirted that I’m unable to tell the difference between that and a simple morning conversation.

Maybe I don’t have intimacy problems, maybe I’m jaded.