A Gentle Push

I was standing amongst the terminally single. Not asexual. Not gay. These men and women are simply oblivious to the opportunities that surround them. Some are emotionally deaf and blind. Others may have been so badly hurt, sometime in their past, that they have subconsciously turned off their receptors. They don’t want to be alone, but they have no idea how to change their lives. Two such individuals caught my attention.

Calling them a couple would have been an exaggeration. They were on a pre-date. There was an innocence about them that was both pure and painful. I watched her face, her eyes, when he talked. There was that glow of admiration that the wives of politicians are so often forced to fake. And even when she was, ostensibly, speaking with someone else, he was paying close attention to everything she said. She didn’t know what that meant. And he was totally unaware of how long those eyes had stayed focused to the side of his face.

Don’t let the setting, a bar, or the beers they were holding, fool you. Katie and Robert were still stuck in Mr. Morgan’s seventh grade home room.

Quietly, separately, I took each of their temperatures. And then I gave them both a gentle push..