I'm Pretty Sure It Happened EXACTLY Like This ...

Something happened today during a lunchtime shopping excursion that happens less and less often these days (and by “less and less often”, I mean that “this is the first time it's happened EVAH”): a beautiful young woman asked for my phone number. “But Dead Acorn,” you might be saying (in which case those nearby may be concerned about your mental health, given such a bizarre utterance, so it might be to your advantage to merely think it). “You were buying a new cell phone and she needed it to access your account and activate your new SIM card.”

While technically, that’s true, still ... you weren’t there to see the slight twitch of her lips as she fought to suppress a shy smile and just the faintest hint of a blush creep into her elegant cheeks. (Ok, I guess if you were in the store, then you were there to see those things … improbable, granted, but if that’s the case, you can verify these things in comments.)

Though our romance was destined to be short-lived, Monique taught me so many things about life that I didn’t know before – where the water-damage detector was, how to transfer saved text messages from my phone to the memory chip – it was if she was looking into my soul and could divine what I needed to hear.

She literally promised me whatever I wanted:

Dead Acorn: So this camera has 1.3 megapixels and this one has 2.0 … will I notice a big difference?

Monique: Whatever.

She told me that whatever choice I made, the world would still be ours, and things would always stay fresh:

Dead Acorn: So I can get to the World Wide Web with this phone?

Monique: duh … yeah, that and every other phone made in the last 5 years. Douche.

But in the end, we both knew that the powers that be would never let us be together, even though she acknowledged that I had crept into her heart:

Dead Acorn: Hey, will you call me real quick so that I’ll know what the ring tone sounds like?

Monique: ummm … I’m pretty sure that’s against store policy. Creep.

As I left, I told her that while I genuinely felt something for her that I had never felt before, something so real and so strong that it might be necessary to stop and imbibe a dram or three of spirits before returning to work just to calm my now-racing heart, that my heart did, in fact, belong to another, and that our yearnings and desires were destined to remain unfulfilled. She seemed a bit taken aback by that, as she was shaking slightly, and seemed somehow ... frightened, for lack of a better word … frightened, no doubt, by the weighty burden of loneliness that, at that moment, she knew she would be shrouded in for the rest of her life.

Monique … sweet, precious Monique … do your heart a favor, and forget about me. Throw away my number ... erase me from your memory ... I’m no good for you, damnit! You’ll find someone someday, and you'll experience the joy and happiness that you so deserve …

… and maybe, just maybe, in a peaceful sleep on a crisp fall morning many years from now, as the morning light washes your face, you’ll see me standing in the shadows of some sweet dream, and you’ll once again show that shy wisp of a smile.