How About That Date?

Moms are shameless. I get women flinging their phone numbers at me all hours of the day. It's a strange phenomena. Here's a typical situation that happened this afternoon. I'm at Kidspace Children's Museum and explain an exhibit to a little Hispanic girl (my Spanish is bad, but functional). Her mom and I get to talking and 5 minutes later we have our cell phones out and are exchanging numbers so that next time we come to the museum we'll be able to hook up and become life long friends. With her few English words, she expressed the desire to become "intimate." "That would be nice," I responded, smiling. I mean it, and I am sad that I'll never see her again.

My fatalistic hopes for this budding friendship are well founded. I accumulate so many of these numbers, each one with great potential. Most of these phone numbers are the result of the "so, do you come here often?" pick-up line (no, it's not just a barstool phrase). And like most bar contacts, I'll never hear from or call 95% of the women. The times that I do try and arrange a play date with such a contact, there is usually a lot of "my baby is sick" excuses or "I'll call you next week..." It just never quite works out. But that doesn't stop us moms from exchanging names, numbers, blood types and dark family secrets within two minutes of meeting each other.

My planner contains the numbers of women of all kinds. The other day at a doctor's office I got to talking with an ancient grandmother named Boon from Singapore and when she discovered my brother-in-law is also from Singapore, she gave me her address and phone number with a fervent plea that I come visit her often in her Pasadena home. I haven't taken her up on it yet, but can't help thinking it would be really neat to create a local grandmother out of thin air for Pixie. Who will call who first?

I was walking home from the market with my toddler a few months ago when a random mom in a yard stopped me and asked if I wanted to be her walking buddy. I said sure, called her multiple times, and never was able to actually cinch a date. I see her sometimes in her yard and wave. I think she's ignoring me.

A new mom in the parking lot of Big Lots approached me and Pixie and asked if we could be friends since she didn't know any other moms in town and she was having a hard time with her newborn. I'm sick to admit that I quickly lost her number that I had scribbled down on an old receipt.

At our local Farmer's Market a massively pregnant woman caught me in the middle of eating a messy pupusa and five minutes later had committed me to train her in the art of hypno-birthing (I did this for my first birth). You guessed it, we haven't spoken since.

Is this just happening to me? Do other women have more success from these random phone number acquisitions? I'll continue to collect these fruitless contacts with hopes that my life will be enriched somehow by them but let's get real, I'm a social black hole. But at least my address book indicates that I have friends. Playdate, anyone?