The garage dater strikes again...

Last week, I saw Bob outside in the parking garage several times. Every time he spotted me, he would wave frantically and from distances that ranged from 5 to 50 feet away and he would shout, “Hey Angela!!” to which I would always look up from what I was doing and say in a boring bland tone, “Hey” in return. He managed to spot me 4 of the 5 days last week. I’m sure it would have been all 5, but I worked from home one day. And honestly, I was sure I would run into him, on the day that I worked from him, in my apartment complex where he’d share with me that he’d just moved in and in a star-crossed fate that proved our impending blossoming relationship, he lived 2 doors down from me. Why? Because that’s just my luck.

It didn’t happen. There’s still time. All he has to do is ask a few more properly placed inquisitive questions, which apparently I am readily available to answer in perfect truth.

Side Note: I need to get that under control. The next time I share where I work and my work schedule with someone, I might actually acquire a stalker.

Side Note to the Side Note: I kind of want to acquire a stalker, you know – just for fun. It’s like the girls that get knocked up for the sole purpose of having another being need them and love them. I’m positively certain that a stalker would make me feel desired and potentially wanted. And now thinking about it, I want one. To be continued on a different day when I am not utilizing all my creative juices to craft a cleverly plotted strategy of breaking one man’s heart.

I digress.

So, each time he said hey to me, he was with a different person, to which I can only speculate were different co-workers. In my head, I imagined that given my lackadaisically unenthused “hey” back, that each different companion asked him, “Do you know her?” and he responded with, “Of course, that’s Angela. We’re going on a lunch date soon. We know each other.”

His, what seems to be, innate confidence has actually made me do a double take on how close he and I have become during this disjointed waltz we’ve been dancing over the last month or so. I mean how close can 2 people be, when one person can’t hear the words – no, I’m not interested, and the other hasn’t committed their name to memory? Nonetheless, this dude is straight up committed to the cause.

Code Name: Double-Oh Rejection.

His tactics however, are a little sideways, falling into no standard category of proper courting techniques. I feel that I could, with definite certainty, guesstimate what his justification for such measures would be – he’d say he was only trying to keep me guessing. (If he only knew.) I mean he doesn’t want to look desperate or anything (because he certainly has not up to this point, clearly).

Garage Daters Timeline (with my best guess of the dates and times)…

• Friday, July 10th // 4:30pm – Stop traffic to oogily ask a girl out and make finite plans for that next week – Tuesday 1pm, I’m coming down to take you to lunch. (Which I only heard… yeah sure, I’m going to have my admin let you down easily in t-minus 5,100 minutes… starting… NOW!)
• Tuesday, July 14th // 1pm – Stand a girl up on those plans. (Granted, I had planned to stand him up 1st; he just beat me to the punch and it wasn’t nearly as funny.)
• Friday, July 24th // 1:30pm – See her 2 weeks later and apologize for forgetting and say you’ll come down and take her to lunch the next week. (With my repetitive response being – no don’t worry about it.)
• Week of July 27th thru the 31st – The week that he was supposed to ask me to lunch a 2nd time to make up for blowing off on the 1st scheduled lunch date, I see him 4 of the 5 days, and all he manages to do is shout a “hey there” to me. (Laaaaaame.)
• Monday, August 3rd // 10:00am – Still no 2nd lunch date established. (Frustration ensues… how am I supposed to break your heart when you just won’t let me, damnit?!)

Keep in mind that I told him NOT to worry about making it up to me. There was no need for him to apologize for missing the original Tuesday lunch date, I didn’t care. Actually, I didn’t care before he stood me up but now I definitely do not care. For a person who I have openly rejected on at least 2 separate occasions, he’s trying awfully hard to make sure I don’t forget who he is. Which the irony in that is simply the fact that I don’t have the 1st clue as to who he is… starting with his name. (He does drive a gay car, though. That I do know and as it turns out, that’s enough.)

Bob made no attempts to talk to me in any extended form, outside of the courteously afore mentioned – hey there’s.

However, the intrigue of actually attending the lunch date might have gotten the better of me. As I last left it, I said I thought it could present a funny situation (even if manufactured on my end), should I actually attend. I stand by that proclamation and I think that my intrigue might just be satiated this week!

• Monday, August 3rd // 1:00pm – Bob spots me, shouts “hey” and then follows that up with a very unexpected – “I’m coming down to your office this week to take you to lunch! Non-negotiable!”

Non-negotiable, eh?! We’ll just see about that…

To be continued…