First loves

On the weekend me and Mr Zeus were talking about our first childhood crushes. His was his nursery school teacher and then a succession of teachers, girls next door and school mates. His first crush laid down an interesting quirk - he finds women whose teeth turn slightly inwards insanely sexy, because his first teacher's teeth were like that.

I struggled to recall anyone. When I was in kindergarten a little boy did want to marry me. He even asked my mother's permission and when she said he was too young, he said he would play music and I would dance and that's how we'd make a living.

I knew he liked me but I wasn't interested back. I remember one afternoon saying I was going to hit him, and the poor little thing, he let me. "I'm warning you," I said, "I'm really strong." Still he let me hit him, so I gave him a few of my hardest punches on his back. But he was a chubby little thing and if he felt the pain he didn't show it. "Okay, my turn." he said, swinging around, to which I replied that wasn't part of the deal and took my five year old self scuttling away.

The one crush I can distinctly remember was when I was about eight years old. At the time I didn't know what it was, so I couldn't identify it as a crush. It was with a cousin of mine, a cool, motorcycle riding cousin. Here's the interesting, slightly creepy part. He was a lot older than me. I can only say it was a crush now because I remember being eight and him getting married in his early 20s, and I remember feeling jealous of the bride, but I was too young and sheltered to identify the feeling that was making me jealous.

So I guess without even knowing it my taste for an older, motorcycle riding man was laid down decades before I ever met Mr Zeus. Interesting!

Since Mr Zeus however, the only men who ever express any interest in me are the Creepy Older Men. They are exclusively the one and only brand of men who ever flirt with me when I'm out without Mr Zeus. And they don't even skip a beat when I mention that I'm married.

It's kinda sad. I'm not saying I want to be flirted with by Calvin Klein models (um well, maybe I am saying that) I am simply at a loss to explain why no man around my age group has ever approached me. Purely out of scientific curiosity, I would like to know why that is.

At a wedding I was recently at, dressed traditionally of course, the couple apparently received a flurry of enquiries from single males about who I was. It was completely the sari's doing, making me appear like a new flavour of icecream to try. Anyway the point is, despite all this supposed interest, no one came near me. Furthermore, the groom being a much older man and thus the majority of guests too belonging to that age group, the chances are that all these enquiries came from haggy old men with a pocket full of Viagra.

3 Benefits of Only Haggy, Creepy Older Men being interested in you:

1. Should things get sticky, you can outrun them very easily.

2. Thanks to their poor eyesight and cataracts, you appear to them in a permanent soft focus glow.

3. You can flatter yourself that they walked into trees/traffic/furniture admiring your beauty, not because they can't see where they're going.

Image: http://fineartamerica.com/images-medium/first-love-beth-armsheimer.jpg