I See Dating People

So, on Sunday evening while I was nursing a "Love It" size dish of mint ice cream with Heath Bar mix-ins at Cold Stone Creamery, I discovered that a couple of my friends were dating.

(If you are wondering who they are, don't ask. I will wait for them to out themselves here on this blog. I'm pretty sure that it is not a secret, but if I were to share their names, you would focus more on them and not on the story. And since this is my blog, I need you to pay attention to me. OK?)

Back to Cold Stone ...

I sat there in disbelief -- not about the fact that they are dating (which I think is great), but about the fact that I did not know. How could this have happened? How did this get by me? How was this inner-looper SO far out of the loop?

And then images started coming back to me. Images from the past few days of my life. Random images of moments that nearly went unnoticed or unquestioned at the time, but which suddenly carried great significance and meaning. Everything was beginning to make sense -- and I didn't even realize that everything didn't make sense to me to begin with!

I was living out the closing scene from The Sixth Sense.

With this new awareness of my friends' relationship, the last few days of my life flashed before my eyes -- eyes which now had the benefit of 20/20 vision ...

• so that's why he came to home team for the first time in a very long time (I thought it was some sort of spiritual awakening)
• so that's why she was at our class event one hour early (I thought she may have read the class calendar incorrectly)
• so that's why she called him for directions to the restaurant on Sunday (I thought she just called somebody whom she knew was going)
• so that's why they sat next to each other at dinner and held hands (I thought ... well, I'm not really sure what I thought about that)

Now my senses are more refined. They are more sensitive to dating people lurking among us. You may or may not notice them. In fact, many people have come to believe that they do not exist at all. But trust me when I tell you that they do. I should know ... I've seen them!