Mr. Burns

Sometimes all I need in life is to know that someone wants me.  That is about all that I can honestly take right now, which is why these last few months have been pleasantly satifying.  You see, Mr. Burns has a crush on me.

Okay, so it is not Mr. Burns.  It is a sweet, awkward 25 year-old intern who is skinny and bald enough for me to make the connection.  Before telling you this story, let me make some clarifications:

I am not, in fact Bill Clinton.  I am not interested in dating or receiving any kind of physical favors from an intern.  There is no flirting and I am not encouraging any confused happy feelings that he may have.  I learned my lesson with both 1) dating someone at work and 2) dating much younger men. 

Clarification made, I still enjoyed the summer.  A smalll dose of witnessing a crush was all it took to wake me up.  I have not thought of love or boys or crushes in a very long time.  As a matter of fact, so many of my friends are getting divorced and I am so jaded from work stuff that I have a hard time believing in love.

I think that I why God sent me Mr. Burns intern.  Not to fall in love, but to be reminded that I am, in fact, a woman who could be loved by someone one day.  That is easy to forget when you are neck-high in senior citizens, meetings, a dysfunctional family, and an uncertain future.

So here is what woke me up:

Mr. Burns doesn't know how to say goodbye or leave any meeting or interaction.  This means that when it was time to go, he lingered.  A lot.  He sat on the couch in my office and asked question after question about me.  That isn't much of anything except for when...

Someone asked him what he wanted to do with his life, and he said "I think I'll just marry a minister so that I can sit on her couch and talk about ministry."  We all acted like no one heard him.  I, however, was very flattered.

And then there was...

I made a joke in a meeting about how sexy it is when men know how to dance.  He immediately said "Gee, I need to learn how to dance" and practiced dancing to himself.  We just laughed it off and kinda ignored it.  Again, I was flattered.

That was all it took.  A summer with a sweet, awkward intern passively flirting with me.  Now I remember that I am, in fact, a woman.  It is strange to think that this is how far I have come from two years ago when the sexy latino janitor was asking me to dinner when I was still dating the sexy funk musician.

For now, I'll take what I can get.  Thank you, Mr. Burns.