You are currently browsing the daily archive for October 29, 2008.
My unit manager has been periodically mentioning a single neighbor of hers to me since the first week I started working. I’m not one for being set up by people who don’t know me well, so I just laughed it off.
In September she started bringing him up more often and offered up a few details – without my asking. He’s 32 (I’m 25), has curly hair (like me), and is a director of pharmacy in one of the chain grocery stores. I still wasn’t taking the bait.
She would ask me each time she saw me if I’d gone by the store yet to take a look. The answer was always “No” (the store is in an area of a neighboring city that I don’t frequent often). One morning, one of the guys leaving heard her and asked if she was trying to set me up. I nodded, and he said, “Don’t do it.” “You’re speaking from personal experience?” He nodded. “They’re all crazy.”
Yesterday, my charge nurse slipped me a photo of my manager, her husband, and another guy at a Halloween party. This other guy was pretty cute and dressed as a ghostbuster. The nurse said, “Don’t tell her I told you, but she told me he’s got kids.” Why wouldn’t that be a detail worth mentioning?
I went shopping with my sister, and the store we were checking out happened to be nearby his grocery store. My sister decided she would go in and take a look (and get a name). She came out smiling. Her verdict: cute, though probably significantly shorter than me (she couldn’t be sure since she couldn’t get close). She did get his name, and I definitely didn’t pull ahead in our little on-going competition of “whose guy has a better last name?” ( Though, I’m still in the lead.)
It’s not that I’m not interested in meeting someone, but that I don’t really trust my manager to do any matchmaking. We’ve never had much of a conversation beyond the initial interview and some small talk here and there. It also seems like this guy and I are in two very different places. I’m still living at home and have never really been in a serious, long-term relationship. And kids? There’s been an awful lot of thought over something I don’t plan on pursuing.
A few days later my charge nurse said, “[Nurse Manager] wanted me to ask what you thought of the picture when no one else was around so you wouldn’t be embarrassed.” That made me smile, and then I told her that I thought he was cute, but I just wasn’t interested and why. She smiled and said that my preceptor Debbie had been wanting to set me up, too, but that she didn’t know how to bring it up. I asked, “Who with?” Her son.
In the last 10 months, I’ve learned this about her son: He’s overweight and self-conscious about it. He’s got curly hair. By now he’s either finished grad school or will soon. (I forget with what.) He can sing and play the guitar. (She showed me a song he wrote,sang,played, and recorded for her for Mother’s Day.) He’s living at home to save money. (I can relate.) And…that’s about it. Except that his mama is very proud of him.
Debbie and I get along splendidly. We share a similar sense of humor, so working with her is a lot of fun. (She’s been out due to a knee/hip injury this last month.) When Charge Nurse told me of her own matchmaking wish, I replied that it was actually more agreeable to me than the other simply because Debbie knew me much better than Nurse Manager did. The idea of Debbie setting me up with anyone wouldn’t make me as uncomfortable.
And I’m sure that Charge Nurse will relay this to Debbie the next time they talk.
