Everyone get atavistic

So at work a few weeks back, one of the upstairs teachers passed by my door and asked out of the blue, "Are you dating anyone? Because I know someone who has a crush on you."

And I thought, "Is this seventh grade?"

Present at the time was the other co-worker from item three in this post, so it wasn't her the first one was talking about. And that thing was never serious, really.

I quickly surmised that the one with a "crush" on me was a parent and co-worker whom I'd caught the vibes from early on. Ironically, she reminded me of Spooky very early on. She just had this strange air of hyper-concern for her children (I mean the kind of overbearing fawning mothering that makes kids sick so that mothers can feel good about taking care of them) and hypochondria and general nuttiness. That, and the same sort of blend of sequacious submissiveness and half-hearted assertiveness.

Oh, and she, too, has a suspiciously close relationship with a supposedly estranged husband. My interactions with this latter fellow have always been a bit awkward; I got the strange feeling that he felt I was some kind of rival. I'd always ascribed it to what he might have seen as a rivalry for his daughter's attention, but hell, maybe he knew about his separated wife's crush thing.

So, anyway, in short... so not interested.

***

Interestingly, Noah Webster, in the first edition of his dictionary, defined "freedom" as "a violation of the rules of decorum." Sanctimonious old goat.