21st Century Romance

Two generations before ours things were very easy, your parents would find for a nice girl from a nice family and mostly from the same neighbor as you. The two come together and live happily ever after.

Now two generations later you get to my time. A time in which I was actually pretty sure Beyonce was still an option until she settled for somebody twice her age, but hey, that is none of my business. I live in a world where I take girls out on dates, weigh them out for compatibility and then end up deciding they not Beyonce enough to marry. I think my worst dates are not even most disastrous ones, the ones that end in awkward silence or acute embarrassment or childhood anecdotes so boring I decide to make a break for it from the bathroom window. (Side note; the bathroom windows are too small if you are more on the plus size end. You know, the few of us that are sexy to overflowing. My recommendation is that they should make their windows bigger). The worst dates are those that seem initially promising and then fizzle out – the contacts who “die inside my phone” or never respond to my text messages. The ones about which I will always wonder if I let something special slip through my grasp.

An example comes to mind: so I run into the beautiful girl at a youth group I was visiting. Her name is Mwansa. I actually worked up the courage to ask her to join me for Ice Cream. This evening was wonderful, we talked, we laughed, we finished each other’s sentences she even gave me a good night kiss when I dropped her off.

I wanted to see Mwansa again, but I was faced with a simple conundrum that plagues us all. Well at least I hope I am not the only one. How and when do I communicate next?

Do I call? Do I text? Do I send a facebook message? Do I send a smoke signal? How does one do that? How do I even explain to my land lady that I burnt down her house trying to send a smoke signal?.

Eventually I decided to text her, because she seemed like a heavy texter. I waited a few days, so as not to seem overeager. I found out that Abel Chuugu was playing that week in Livingstone.

Here was my text: “Hey-don’t know if you are still around Livingstone, but Abel Chuugu is playing tonight and tomorrow at Kozo Lodge. You wanna go? Maybe he will let you cover IIoba if we ask nicely?

A nice, firm ask with a little inside joke thrown in. I was pretty confident. I wasn’t head-over-heels in love with Mwansa, but she seemed really cool and it felt like we had a good connection.

As I waited for her response, I started picturing our hypothetical relationship. Perhaps next weekend I would take her for a picnic and show her “the note book” on my laptop. Would Mwansa and I go Vacation in Siavonga next year? Who knew what the future would be? This was going to be great!

A few minutes later went by and the status of text message changed to “Read”. My Heart stopped. This was the moment of truth. I braced myself as I open the text, only to find it was one from Collins reminding me that Chelsea had lost to Arsenal for the first time in two years.

I waited some more for Mwansa to reply, she’s probably just crafting her perfectly witty response………..

To be continued.