The set up

The other day, I was in a restaurant quietly having my meal. Then, this girl came, and without even asking, she sat at my table and called over a waiter. I kept quiet of course. I mean, I am not brave enough to ask a girl what she is doing at my table. Then, she surprised me.

Saturday, August 11, 2012

The other day, I was in a restaurant quietly having my meal. Then, this girl came, and without even asking, she sat at my table and called over a waiter. I kept quiet of course. I mean, I am not brave enough to ask a girl what she is doing at my table. Then, she surprised me.She asked me what the waiter should get for me! I shrugged my shoulders, but she asked again, this time insisting. She told me again, "so, what should I get?” When I still didn’t answer; she told the waiter "get me this”, pointing to my food.The waiter left. Idecided to mind my own business, but my mind was racing. What kind of girl was this, what did she want from me, and why on earth was she asking me what she should get. I fixed my eyes on my plate and continued eating, but after a while of silence, she said, "excuse me”. I looked up, and she added, "am your date, you shouldn’t be ignoring your date”. I got even more confused. What did this girl want from me? Then, I managed to stutter a barely audible, "excuse me, but I’m confused. I think you are mistaking me for someone else”. She chuckled and shook her head. She had pretty hair, and big round earrings. Then she said, No, Shem, I am not mistaking you for anyone, I am your date”. I went quiet. Somehow, she soon had me talking, and she had this way of taking control of everything.  For once, I did not have to worry about what to say to a girl, she took the lead. At some point, when she realized I had got comfortable enough, she let me ask a few questions, and my very first question was the most obvious, "who are you and how do you know me?” She answered that who she is, is of no consequence, and how she got to know me was through a mutual friend of ours. That answer, although it didn’t make sense to me pacified me, and I didn’t even ask how she knew where to find me. We "dated for two weeks”, and one day, she was suddenly no longer available. I was pretty used to girls changing their mind about me, so I didn’t dwell on her decision to stop seeing me. But there was something about the whole thing that just didn’t seem real. So, I started thinking through everything and I asked a few friends of mine if they knew her. They all seemed evasive all of a sudden, until one of them told me the truth. They had set me up. It had all been a major set up; the whole thing hadn’t been real. This is how it happened; one day, my friends met and decided that it was high time I got a girlfriend. It was all done in good faith, and with good intentions. The debate then shifted to whether they should get me a real girlfriend, or a fake one. The fake girl side won since, they all knew I wasn’t good at turning girls into girlfriends. Then one of them said he knew this girl who, even if she was dating someone else, she might be willing to play the part. So, they talked to her, and she agreed to do it as long as it was interesting. What they didn’t count on was that I was not good at keeping girls interested in me for any duration that exceeds a few hours utmost. Two weeks, and she was done with me. She just sent me a text and told me it was all over, and I should no disturb her again. I didn’t disturb her or call her. I wasn’t even angry at my friends, because for two weeks, I had believed I had a girlfriend.