A date?

After reading this, those of you who don't know me well will say, "St. Caffeine must be an utter idiot." Those of you who do know me will say, "Oh, that's just St. Caffeine, bless his heart." Anyway, here's the story.

I may have had a date this past Wednesday night. See, one of my really good (former) students sent me an email over the holiday break telling me how much she had enjoyed my classes and how I had changed her opinion of economics, etc. Manna from heaven for a teacher -- especially an economics teacher. We almost never hear stuff like that. Anyway, this particular student was an "interesting" girl. She sat in the back and was usually pretty quiet, but occasionally she'd ask a question that told me she was reading the textbook. Heck, she was even reading ahead! Plus, she'd occasionally email me with econ questions that even went beyond the scope of the material in the class and the book. Yes, amazingly enough, she was applying the classroom lessons and then thinking on her own. Wow! Plus, and this was the biggest point in her favor, her emails were quirky. I'm a sucker for quirky.

So back to this email, ... She expressed her enjoyment of the class and she mentioned that if I found myself over Madison way, I should let her know and we might meet up for a cup of joe. Okay, in some cases I might have taken that to be flirting, but I really never got that feeling from her. So this past Wednesday I had to go fill in at Huntsville for a co-worker, so I sent her an email asking if she'd like to meet up. She replied in the affirmative and we made plans. We met at Barnes and Noble (in the Starbucks), had our drinks, and enjoyed nice conversation. Everything went smoothly until it was time to leave. I walked her to her car (being a gallant gentleman and all) and then suddenly there was that awkward moment of HOW DO WE END THIS? Yikes, I thought, is this a date (or maybe a pre-date)? I'm not saying I'd complain about that, but I was just taken aback. We left it with a quick hug and a "we'll have to do this again."

I'm sure I may have offended her with my general thickness, but I guess we'll see. Sigh, it's hard being me sometimes.