I do - one for the files and two for the road

Last week a friend, an otherwise perfectly able speaker of English, asked me, in a never-mind-the-pissing-off context, if I was "receptive to dialogue".

Yesterday, this interior designer chick threw prima facie at me.

Today, at a health food talk, a dietitian, sorry, wellness specialist, used "at the end of the mind". Twice. Is it even a phrase? She reminded me of one Preeti Sharma, classmate from class 5, who used to say, instead of lungs, "at the top of her volume". (I happily parroted this non-figure of speech at home, to my father, who was much taller than me at the time, and he, poor guy, had an expression that went something like "huh? whaa??")

Is it only me or are "more and more" people taking pride in sounding "less and less" normal?

~

Last week, I pulled off a concept I'm still big on: social experiments. I went to meet a boy. To marry. If I wanted. No pressure. Arranged marriages for the personality-less. Hawk the chick.

Yes. I did this. I said ok, I will meet him. My parents aren't paranoid. They're, shall we say, 'concerned'. You know how it is.

It was one of those what's-the-harm-in-checking-him-out kind of meets. It didn't depress me. Not then. I wore no earrings. No make up. Ok, slight mascara.

There was nothing wrong with, "my husband". Except for how lonely he seemed. And dull. And unanimated. But he was jetlagged. Benefit given, margin made. Had a thing for planes. A passion, really. You may now quiz me on Boeings versus airbuses. He said "maess", not mass. Said freeway, not highway. I didn't mind the Americanisms.

Oh, and, Katrina Kaif over Mila Kunis. Entourage over Lost. Said, so you like writing? Said, new years isn't a big deal for him. But then he displayed his isolation to me by saying he's spent a lot of his new years on board a plane, when returning to college in the states. As if the crew serving you sad little flutes of champagne is any reason to be cheered.

Again, there was nothing wrong with him. Sorry, with "my husband". He was a looker. 31. Tall. Spoke well. "Cultured", my mother said.  Pulled chair for me. Courteous. Virgo, even. No sarcasm. I liked that. But I felt nothing. My friends told me: yea, obviously, man! Who in the first go feels anything? Meet him again. Yes, I might. If he calls. The thing is, I wasn't at all, even the slightest bit, thrown off. I need to be thrown off. Catch me off guard. If I can look into your nice, brown eyes and hold that gaze, I'm too confident. You need to be able to throw me off! Please? It gets tiring being the smart ass. Will it kill you to play a sideways game? To be foolish but back that with humble smarts? To know me? To guess me? To be a little playful? To flow by instinct? To vouch not so strongly for Coldplay? To be with me on the same page? To acknowledge that whatever we're doing -- this, this, sitting down, conversing, getting to KNOW each other through our parents, for god's sake -- is altogether irrelevant because it's so very surface?

What I'm scoring you on has nothing to do with your CK socks. It's never a question of making me laugh. I can do that myself. I have my people who can do that to me. But make me feel cheesy. Put a smile on my face. Not a sympathetic little upturn. Or a smirk. A smile! Then we'll talk. If you don't do that to me, you erode hope. That's depressing. Then it's bu-bye open mind. Hello wistful sighs. I become stiff. Sulky. Acerbic. I become I don't want to do this, fuck off, this can't be my story, I'm too me, still young, as yet only 27, still optimistic, still foolish, more protective of myself, and compared to a year, even 6 months ago, with a dollop more certainty of who I want and what I don't care about.