What a Difference a Year Makes

Yesterday we made plans for a short vacation this summer. With our kids. Two months into “us” and it feels perfectly natural to make plans four months down the road. I marvel at how different it feels to be dating Frenchy, especially compared to “Perfect Timing,” the guy I was dating a year ago at this time. Even though I saw Perfect Timing almost every week for 6 months, I never knew when, or even if, I’d see him again. It kind of felt like I was dating a carny, who, at any moment, might pack up his Tilt-a-Whirl and be on his way to the next town, the next date.

Perfect Timing, who henceforth shall be known as “Carny,” was not one for making plans with me--even plans only a week in advance--which didn’t help me figure out where I stood with him. It was as if every date, after the first three dates, was the fourth date. He liked it that way – being able to behave as if we had just started dating, so the question of what we were to each other was never asked. At least out loud. It’s remarkable to me now that I could have thought so little would have been enough for me, but I had deluded myself into believing a weekly ride on the Tilt-a-Whirl was all I really needed. Or, perhaps, deserved. It wasn’t, of course, but I wasted six months pretending it was, until I finally got sick of his boring ride to nowhere, and quit going to the carnival.

And now Carny has returned, trying to text his way back into my life, it would seem. After not hearing from him since September, he recently texted me the name of a book he said I might be interested in reading, which I suspect is just a lazy pretext to start chatting with me again. After asking him who was texting me (because I deleted his number after I vowed to never go out with him again), I texted back with the most perfunctory of thank-yous, hoping he’d read between the lines that I’m not at all interested in getting back on his Tilt-a-Whirl. Ever.