Bandit
It's a tenuous posting for the QOTW, but I'm telling the story anyway.

My mum is an Eastender. No, she's not a soap actress, but was born and brought up in East Ham, East London.

As a true salt-of-the-earth cockney, she naturally has some very cockney ways about her. One of which is that everyone, bar none, gets a nickname.

This is the trait that I swore to avoid as I was growing up. I’m pretty sure that despite seeming to laugh along, Michael doesn’t appreciate being called “Fat Mick” and Phil, who has worked for Royal Mail his entire life, probably tires of being called (unimaginatively) “Phil The Post”

Recently though I find myself adopting nicknames more and more. My best friend is called Badger, for no other reason than a passing comment she once made. Another friend, Lisa, is called Peg which dates back to an old username she used on AOL years ago, and more recently a girl that I know who is always ill has been lovingly referred to (behind her back) as Dead Girl.

Chatting to girls online is the new vogue. Everyone's doing it, or so I'm led to believe, and using dating sites like PlentyOfFish is no longer to be sneered at.

I was chatting to a girl online on Saturday night that I met through POF. Within a few lines she mentioned that she was born with one arm slightly defected and went on to say that she'd gone through life without too many problems and leads an otherwise normal life.

We were chatting away and I found more and more that I was instigating the conversation and getting very little in way of a response. Several things I was asking were answered with yes or no answers, and when I tried to get her to ask some questions, she declined to.

I figured that we'd reached the end of a natural conversation, and so said that I was signing off to go and watch TV even though there was nothing on worth watching.

"No!" she said, "stay and chat. I'm only ironing; I could do with someone to chat to."

Taking this as a sign that she was still interested (and subliminally thinking I may get laid here sooner or later) I carried on chatting. Again, I was making all of the conversation and quite frankly was running out of things to talk about.

I'd asked for her number, figuring that it may be easier to get a conversation going verbally than via MSN, but was told that she was wary as she'd given her number out before and ended up with a psycho. I asked if she fancied meeting up for a drink, but she was only able to do next weekend when I have the kids, so that was put on a back burner, especially as she wouldn't commit to anything midweek.

The conversation went slower as I struggled to find something that may ignite a decent response. We'd discussed work, cars, family, even religion.

Suddenly, seeing my guitar in the corner of the room, I thought of a question.

Music is a broad subject, and can be opened up in a variety of ways. Everyone has favourite bands and varying opinions, so I tapped away an opening gambit:

"Do you play any musical instruments?"

My fingers moved quickly from the question mark to the Enter key. Too quickly.

In the fraction of a second it took for the message to be sent though cyber space, my brain did a quick run through. Guitar. Piano. Trumpet. Trombone. Flute. All instruments that could only be played with two hands. Bugger. If the conversation was stifled before, this would be kill or cure.

"That would be a bit difficult" came the reply.

I tried to rescue the situation. I joked about it, apologising as I did, I said that it was still a valid question. I may even have mentioned the word "kazoo", but to no avail.

I then tried my piece de resistance and said “Sorry Bandit if I caused offence.”

“Bandit?” She replied.

“Well it’s the only other thing I could think of that had one arm – A one-armed bandit."

Unsurprisingly, I haven't heard from her since, and like all good kids, I blame my mum and her habit of assigning nicknames.
( SeasonTicketless is too often the statue, and rarely the pigeon., Mon 4 May 2009, 12:45, 2 replies)

Smooth...
...really smooth!
( TheMagicDwarf is back like ballroom dancing, Mon 4 May 2009, 13:02, closed)

This this this!

( Noeli overtheshoulderboulderholderthingstraplatchboobs, Tue 5 May 2009, 8:25, closed)