Color Me a Heartbreaker

So, in the latest from the 'can a girl get a break here?' front (or is from the 'when irony bites you on the ass' file? I get those confused sometimes.) I made a grown man cry today and not in a good way.

We have a regular customer, David, who is mentally challenged. He is also mostly deaf and has a wicked speech impediment so he's not the easiest to wait on. It's not uncommon to see sellers diving behind cases and making beelines to the other side of the store when they see him coming. Plus he can't read but always has complicated questions about resources or books. Questions that if you had a super fast computer and a week to work on you could probably solve but with an ever shrinking inventory and other customers waiting, yeah, it's not going to happen. But I get on with David fine. He's a good soul and I have a okay ear for language so I can mostly make him out. Plus he knows my name so if he sees me, he latches on.

So last week I'm wearing my pink sparkly sweater-it's new enough the novelty hasn't worn off and it was probably the last day it would be cool enough to stand wearing it-when David came in with his question of the week (real estate resources for the handicapped). Midconversation he stopped and looked at me.

"SAM, YOU LOOK PRETTY TODAY."
"THANK YOU DAVID. I APPRECIATE THAT."

He then gives me a hug and announces to the sellers around the Info Desk, now all convulsed with laughter and determinedly not helping me, "I LIKE SAM."

"SAM ARE YOU MARRIED?"
"NO DAVID, I'M NOT MARRIED."
"DO YOU HAVE A BOYFRIEND?"

Of all the times in my life I could have used one of the handy little white lies now was the time. Just a simple yes would have done it. But I was so flabbergasted by the hug-it beats getting hit, pinched or pepper sprayed, all of which have happened to me but it's still so not what I thought was gonna happen-that I responded honestly.

"NO DAVID, I'M SINGLE."

Oh shit, now what did I do?

"WOULD YOU LIKE TO GO OUT FOR COFFEE SOMETIME?"

Again I'm at sea. Totally at a loss. All I could squeak out was, "I'LL THINK ABOUT IT AND LET YOU KNOW."

So after a week of ha-ha, funny funny from the staff today David comes in again. I head him off at the pass with the meager information I have found regarding in his question in the feeble hope that he will be so distracted he will forget the other question from last week.

But no, of course not.

So I said, very kindly, that while I appreciated the offer, it probably wasn't the best idea since he's a customer. Then he proceeded to get very upset, apologize profusely and started to cry. So I was standing there akwardly patting his arm, trying to reassure him that he didn't do anything wrong all the while thinking,

"The single life? It's faaabulous."