“Do you think he’s in love with me?”

“Of course he is, I mean, how could he not be?”

“Right. But how can you tell?”

This is a tricky question seeing as she has never met him in her entire life.

“Because he hung out with you for so long. Dudes don’t do that unless they are in love with you.”

“Ok, but I acted retard* all night, so how could he be in love me?”

“What? You were so not retard, nothing you told me was retard.”

Yes, but I only gave her the highlights that made me look genius. I refrained from telling her how I chatted him up about my purse being too big. That, my friends, was retard.

“He said he had a good time with you at the end of the night,” she said. “You are the only person I know who can take that and turn it into ‘I was retard’.”

Not true. She could do it in a heartbeat.

“Ok, but what is our strategy, because I can never see him again,” I said.

“What? I thought you wanted to see him again, why can you never see him again?”

“Because I can’t. I have to hide behind a pillar and pretend I’m not there.”

“Ohhhhh, I see. You do that thing that I do where you can’t talk to boys you like.”

“Exactly.”

“We can overcome that. We can design a training program that will prepare you.”

“But who is going to be the technical expert? I feel like we’re not qualified.”

I feel like we’re not qualified, said the retired sex columnist. There’s one more sign that proves Armageddon is coming like a nightmare.

“I think we can do this. Between the two of us, I feel like we can design a quality program.”

“What if we do the Cyrano de Bergerac thing, and I wear an earpiece and November has the other end and he tells me what to say?”

“I don’t know, is November good at hitting on boys?”

“He probably knows what boys want to hear. Wait, scratch that, he’ll probably tell me to flash him my tits and say, ’something, something, do it in the butt.’ That’s not a good plan.”

“No, we’ll have to scratch that. When are you going to see him again?”

Silence.

“Wait, does he have your number?”

“No.”

“Right.”

Retard (pronouned ruh-TARD) is a special word to us, although we try to avoid using it in mixed company, as it is quite offensive. We use it in honor of one of our fellow Peace Corps Volunteers, to commemorate the time she was trying very hard to yell at a man, in French, and tell him that he was late for their appointment, or “Vous etes en retard (ray-TAR).” Instead, she told him “Vous etes retard (ruh-TARD)”, which translates into absolutely nothing. God bless her. He probably thought she a little bit retard.