Emma - my eldest - stays at home by herself one day a week when I’m at work. She has access to the Intarweb and likes to play Webkinz and look at the weather and email her cousins in Australia. All relatively harmless things because she knows I can remote to my home PC from the office and block her computer access entirely.

She’s also old enough for us to have sort-of candid talks about relationships.  As a rule, my children don’t meet anyone I date, but know they are around. The worst thing is that Emma desperately wants a stepdad and while I try to remind her - how women’s lib - ‘I don’t need a man and I’m not ready for a relationship and if and when I am it will be a considerable amount of time before you will meet him’, she just doesn’t quite get it. Her dad went from our marriage - literally - into his relationship with the Unofficial StepMonster. 

Perhaps I should divert Em’s attention, encourage her to have a career in international espionage, and stop threatening her with military school. She has this inherant ability to listen through plastered walls and hear my end of phone calls and recount them with almost seventy-percent accuracy. She then asks very pointed questions afterward about details of my life.

So, imagine my embarrassment when I get an email at work from Midnight, explaining Em contacted him by instant messanger after she heard a thunderstorm warning announcment on the local television station. Apparently from England he has the ability to hoist a rather large umbrella over our city, or contact the person who spins the weatherdial from sunny to rainy to thunderstorming to cats’n'freaking dogs.

That was like, level six embarrassment on a scale of one-to-ten.

I figured no-harm, no-foul; Em and I talked and I explained how it was completely inappropriate for her to communicate with people from the web she didn’t know, in addition to a more in-depth description of sexual predators and What They Do To Young Girls.

When I arrived home that afternoon I learned she also instant messaged HeathBar, the guy with the combover I had successfully ignored. After hurtling myself across the room to read the chat history, level six embarrassment gave way to … errr… level FIFTY GAZILLION as my entire body blushed for hours.

***

“Hello I’m Emma and did my mom tell you she had three kids and thought you were going to dump her?”

(Way to make me sound like a douche, Em.)

“Hello there.”

“I know where you live.”

(… And now my kid sounds like a stalker.)

“Okay.”

“You live five minutes away.”

(Reason #508 why I cannot date anyone who lives within a ten-mile radius.)

“So, what brings you on to messenger to talk to me?”

“My mom is a work and I’m bored.”

“Ahh,” is all he says.

“Is it raining over there?”

“Well, I’m downtown but yeah, it was raining when I went
out for lunch.”

“Ya, it was a minute ago where I am.”

(Here is where my entire head commenced pounding and blushing.) 

“So, what were you trying to send me earlier?” he asked. “I can’t get attachment type things on my Mac version of the program. It said I was trying to recieve some handwritten message.”

“I was trying to say ‘hi’.”

“Oh, hi.”

“I don’t like storms.”

(And here is where my body started blushing.)

“You also sent what looked like half a message and said “and she thought you were going to dump her.”

(What? I never said that!) 

“Nothing.”

(Great. Now she plays coy.)

“Ok.”

“I shouldn’t tell you.”

(Oh, she is good!)

“Ok.”

“Are you and my mom still together? I’m not trying to be rude.”

(Dammit! She needs spy classes… or at least get her hearing checked.)

“It’s not rude to ask, I just don’t know that she would want me talking about that with her daughter.”

(Right, I don’t. And wouldn’t.)

“She wouldn’t care.”

(Yes, I would!)

“Well, just the same, I probably shouldn’t.”

(Thank you, HeathBar. You sort of redeemed yourself for the combover.)

“Whyy?” she whines. ”Are you talking to my mom?”

“Not at the moment. Nothing bad though. We talked and then met. I tried to see about getting together again sometime and didn’t hear back after a couple tries so I just assumed she wasn’t interested.”

(Way to blow the details, HeathBar, to the Mouth of the South. Former semi-compliment is retracted.)

“She did like you, she thought you would dump her like every one else. She thought you weren’t interested.”

(Okay, I’m not sure if I should be happy she didn’t admit the truth, or sad that my kid thinks every man dumps me when I assure you, I am quite the dumper.)

“Ah, I see. Well that would seem like we were both thinking the same thing and we were both wrong.”

“My mom thought you were nice funny and sweet.”

(I’m going to have to remind her I am mum not mom.)

“Well I thought she was, too.”

(I may be sick.)

“That’s cool.”

“So were you really bored or were you trying to play matchmaker for your mom?”

“I was bored.”

***

After that, my inability to communicate and ignore men reached an all-time Guinness World Record low when HeathBar emailed me several times.

I also purchased a new home laptop with fingerprint access so Em can’t sneakily steal my password and log into my account, and put severe parental controls on the old system so she’s now limited to accessing only four websites.

And I started researching in-state military schools with boarding options.