Skate-by relationship seeking

I took my great nieces to the roller rink yesterday. I was really shaky, not having been on skates for over a decade. But, I tottered around the kiddie floor until I felt confident enough to venture out into the swirling masses on the big floor. It was in the kiddie area that I experienced the strangeness that has become modern relationship seeking.

First, there was a thin grey-haired man with a black KISS t-shirt skating with a 10ish red-haired little girl. He mentioned to me that he had just had his fiftieth birthday and was 'at least still getting out here'. I replied 'good for you'. A few minutes later, the little red-haired girl came up to tell me that her daddy 'thinks you're pretty...' Oh. 'that's nice, thanks...'

Then, as I was sitting on the sticky shag-carpeted bench, a buzz-cut woman wheeled up and plopped down inches from me, grinning. She crossed one leg up onto her knee and said 'My stoppers are coming unscrewed'. Oh. Bummer, dude, ah, dudette. Um, dude'. She cranked away on the big eraser things on the front of her skates, grinning rakishly at me, and began talking about her life, her friends, what fun... and, with a little wave and smile, she was off.

My daughter started laughing, and said 'Geez, Mom, you're getting hit on by both sexes! You still got it!' She was, of course, kidding. Neither hitter was attractive or desirable enough to make the hittee (me) feel flattered. Flattened, more like. But the experience did serve as a lesson in modern relationship-seeking behaviors.

I thought I was taking some little girls skating. No, I was at one of the hottest pick-up spots for older, stranger, lower income, funnier looking singles in town. And I got hit on, so there...