Precisely!

—“You’re not ’FLIRTING',” said my lifeguard friend at Canandaigua’s YMCA swimming pool.
“All you’re doing is striking up a conversation.”
“Precisely!” I shouted. “Right smack on the nose *****!” (Her name is *****.)
“I been on my own over eight years, and I’m not looking for a mate. Someone might change my mind, but I doubt it.
I was lucky with the one I had. I’d be extremely hard to live with.”
I just got done telling ***** my wife would say I’m too “flirtatious.” I wasn’t years ago, but that person was replaced by what Bible-beaters call a “FLIRT.” (Gasp!)
“It’s ‘flirting’ only if there’s evil intent,” ***** said.
There you have it readers: I love talking with women because they’re likely to say something that makes me think!
***** got me reconsidering my definition of “flirting,” the one I had all my life = the one I grew up with. Any contact between men and women, even if only verbal, was EVIL and disgusting.
Per *****, mere striking up a conversation is not EVIL. I’ve heard that same definition elsewhere.
Over the past few months I got much better striking-up-conversations with women. But I thought what I was doing was “flirting,” = EVIL.
Per *****, it’s not.
Mere striking up a conversation with a person of the opposite sex is not evil.
Striking-up-conversations with women is so much fun, it must be sin = “flirting,” (“If it’s fun, it’s sin!”)
I’ve gotten much better at striking up conversations — I do it all the time — mainly with women.
We talk and laugh and talk and laugh and smile at each other. After my childhood I never expected that: “NO PRETTY LADY WILL SMILE AT YOU!”
I’ve considered Facebook “defriending” my aquacise-instructor, to put some distance between us. But I haven’t.
Every once in a while she puts something on her Facebook that gets my attention.
“What’s wrong,” ***** says; “is our society’s values, e.g. striking up a conversation with a person of the opposite sex is EVIL.
And people think they gotta convert others to their way of thinking. Plus people wanna take advantage of others, like men take advantage of women.”
(I hope I have this right if she’s reading it.)
“What’s depressing to me,” I would say; “is you and I are fighting a losing battle. It sounds like you, like me, might be a liberal (gasp); what my arch-CONSERVATIVE sister (deceased) would call a “bleeding-heart liberal.”
Congratulations *****, you got me thinking. My wife used to do that.
The last thing I said to her as I took her to hospice was: “don’t forget, you always had what matters: what’s between the ears.”