Playing nicely

It seems to be my lot to share more than I'm prepared to at the moment. I have nothing against the concept of sharing. In fact, I generally think it's a wonderful idea that helps society hang together nicely. Semi-socialist that I am, I even think there are some people out there who could stand to share a little more. But it should all be even, and it should be done with permission. Instead, I've had sharing foisted upon me, with a decidedly uneven distribution of the goodies.

Flatmate C has a new boy. Man, actually. And he's lovely, really he is. There is very little about him for me to complain about. Apart from one small, niggling detail. When he stays over, he shares my toothpaste instead of C's. I know, it's only toothpaste, it's not like it's either expensive or life threatening if I run out. That's not the bit that really gets to me - although it is part of it, since I came back from my 2 weeks at home to find half the tube gone. The bit that really drives me crazy, though, is that he squeezes from the middle of the tube. I'm not anal about many things, but they're all in the bathroom. The toilet roll has to be put in the holder so the loose end flops over the front; if you splash water on the floor tiles, you wipe them up; you squeeze toothpaste from the bottom of the tube. If he'd done that, I probably wouldn't even have noticed that he was stealing it in the first place, to be honest. And now I'm stuck. Because to mention anything about it would seem petty, but it genuinely does drive me up the wall.

Not nearly as far up the wall as last night's instance of inflicted sharing, though. Last night - I may have mentioned this before - was date night with the archaeologist. It's far to say I was excited and nervous as I waited outside the British Museum for Indiana Jones to swing in on his leather whip. It's equally fair to say that I was disappointed with the anorak-and-hiking-boots-wearing reality. But I was still willing to be convinced. He'd seemed nice enough in the emails and whatever, and he gave me a present, seeming to feel some need to give something on a first date (side note: would have been a more impressive gesture if he'd taken the £2 price sticker off the book before giving it to me, but hey, he is a student and male, so I was cutting him slack. Plus, it was a present). So I soldiered bravely on. Mostly without saying a word, because he chatted at me constantly. The impressive factor dropped even further when it became clear that whilst he was very knowledgeable on all things historical, as you'd expect, he was less aware about the rest of the world; I had to explain what architects and interior designers do to him, at a fairly basic level. But whatever, so it was a bad date for me, whatever he seemed to feel about it to the contrary. It got worse when I spinelessly agreed to head to dinner, having not been quick enough to come up with an excuse, or to say I needed a loo so I could call on emergency help from my friends.

Dinner was in a Greek restaurant. Not the flashest, but the New Yorker I was dining with had turned his nose up at the Italian restaurants, telling me that he was too picky (implying that nowhere outside New York does decent Italian food; I would point him in the direction of Italy). He was on a budget, I was indecisive, we ended up with a meze platter. Which he proceeded to devour, at speed, with a noticeable lack of anything that could be called table manners. There was a basket of four pieces of pita bread; he ate three and a half pieces in the time it took me to get through the half that I ripped off. The same thing happened with the next two baskets. Call me nuts, but you shouldn't go home from a dinner date still ravenous. I did.

But he was willing to share other things. The fact that I reminded him of his little sister, for one thing. The exact contents of his mouth was another, as he chewed with his mouth open and regaled me with stories about his soccer prowess, back when he was 9. It was not a good date. But I couldn't bring myself to share that with him. And he couldn't seem to get the message as I repeatedly ducked out of his attempts to put an arm around me, to hold my hand, to do anything that would imply I was enjoying the date.

So he may have ended the night with the impression that the date might be repeated sometime in the future, in spite of my evasions. Sometimes, it's just better to share.