Monday 1 August 2011

A funny thing happened...

...on my way down the lane yesterday. An elderly couple were coming towards me, and the woman came right up to me (her husband - perhaps wisely - kept out of the way).

Woman: You look lovely!
Me: Er - than you very much.
Woman: I really mean it.
Me: Well...thank you.

She then kissed me on the cheek, wished me "a lovely day", and went on her way.

I did not enjoy this on several levels. There were issues of personal space, for a start, and the way she fixed me with pleading eyes made me feel as though I was being love-bombed (or something very like it). Whatever it was about, it was a distinctly uncomfortable experience.

So if you kissed a total stranger (tallish, female, grey tee shirt) in Morris Lane Devizes yesterday, please, please don't do it again.

10 comments:

  1. Oh Frances What a strange thing to have happened. I feel sorry for her husband, but there again maybe he does it too.

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  2. Perhaps she'd read the same blog that I read yesterday in which someone was very happy because someone had done exactly the same thing. I guess this woman thinks you win some and you lose some!

    I am all for getting compliments, but the kiss would have put me off .

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  3. Ooh that sounds strange! I wouldn't have liked that either (the compliment would have been nice, but definitely not the kiss)!

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  4. Hi, Jarmara. From her husband's stance, I think this kind of thing has happened before!

    Jenny, perhpas it was the same person doing the kissing!

    Hi, Teresa. Yes. Complments are lovely, but there was somethng decidedly odd about her, and the kiss was just too much!

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  5. It truly IS odd. Had the elderly lady been a man, it would have been sexual harrassment. But I guess she really thought she was paying you a big compliment and your day would be a lot brighter for it.

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  6. How vastly odd. Do you think she mistook you for somebody else, Frances, somebody for whom the kiss would have been totally appropriate? Or maybe she's losing her marbles and assumes that she must know every woman she meets who looks lovely?

    I'd just hang on to the 'you look lovely' part (you do) and, as far as possible, ignore the kiss-giving invasion of space. It's not every day you're told you look lovely. (On the other hand, maybe this happens to you routinely - perhaps I should have said it's not every day I get told I look lovely!!)

    Bummer about Titch getting kicked though, even if it was his fault...

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  7. What an odd thing for a person to do.

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  8. Librarian, you are more charitable than I am! There was something quite sinister about that encounter.

    Alis, how are you? Are you stiil in France? Apropos the kiss, see above. And no. Sadly I wasn't looking lovely. But I was on my way to the pub, so maybe I had an expression of cheerful anticipaton ...?

    Patsy, indeed it was. And I really don't want it to happen again.

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  9. Sadly, Frances, I suspect she was suffering from some form of dementia and either thought you were someone she knew (or once knew), or had forgotten that it wasn't socially appropriate to kiss a stranger like that. I'd have thought her husband would have quietly apologised. But maybe it happens a lot and he knows she would get upset if he said anything. It makes me feel a bit sad really but I can understand how it made you feel uncomfortable, too. x

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  10. Olivia, you are more charitable than I am. I think the problem is that she reminded me of an aunt of my deceased husband, who did just this kind of thing, and wasn't deranged at all.

    Still, I was perfectly polite, and didn't show how I really felt, and she went cheerfully on her way, so no harm done!

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