When a female friend calls you to tell you she has met someone who used to know you years before, and you’re having trouble recalling the individual in question, and she continues to provide clues to you as to where you knew this individual from, and the recall of this individual whom you have not thought of in at least five years slowly begins to creep into your consciousness; before you say “Oh! I remember him. Kind of a strange ugly loner fella,” first ask, “Are you dating him?” If you fail to do this, you are likely to hear a dumbfounded sputter emitting from the receiver which tells you that you should have asked “Are you dating him?,” first. After all, even though you are almost completely clueless in matters involving the lady sex, you should have by now figured out that this is precisely the sort of information that a lady will initially withhold from such a conversation in the hopes that she will hear you say, “Oh! I remember him. Charming good looking guy.” After all, why the hell else would she have bothered to call and ask/tell you this? Now you’re going to have to feel mildly mortified for being so forthcoming about your memory of the guy, while you listen to her spend the next half hour justifying to you (but really justifying to herself) why it is exactly that she feels attracted to him, which is stupid and annoying because it really isn’t your business anyway.

I sincerely hope that she and the strange ugly loner fella have a long, happy and fruitful future together. For a strange ugly loner fella, I guess he’s he an okay sort of guy. Never hated him, actually. I also hope that I never find myself in a situation where I’m speaking to him and he calls me on calling him a strange ugly loner fella. I’m okay with her telling him, and I’m okay with him hating me over it, but I would rather just never have to address that conversation about him ever again.