Perhaps This Is Why I'm Still Single

I had to talk to a guy from the New Zealand Embassy today.

Bummer, right?

I had emailed him originally, because we needed to change something we had set up with his office a few weeks back. So I emailed my contact over there, hoping we could resolve this easily. I had originally thought a phone call would be quickest, but for whatever reason, I thought he'd be busy and an email would be easier for him to respond to.

A few hours later, co-worker Josh buzzs me on the phone: "A guy from the Australian Embassy is on the phone for you."

I decide he wasn't paying much attention to the guy's intro and that it's probably my contact from New Zealand, so I took the call.

"This is Kate." Normal American, ever-fading Wisconsin accent.

I guess I forgot that people who work in foreign embassies are usually foreigners from their embassy country, because I was expecting a normal, bland American voice to respond.

Instead, I was greeted by a voice with a Down Under drawl, quite possibly laced with Love Potion #9, because I was suddenly irrationally head over heels in love with the unseen, perhaps married or really old, but necessarily wonderful man on the other end of the phone.

I almost forgot to respond when he followed up his greeting with a clarification question. I quite literally forgot what my voice sounded like and worried I was going to respond with a butchered Aussie/New Zealand accent to make him think I was one of his own.

But just before the silence after his question became awkwardly lengthy, I pulled enough of my bearings to respond in my normal, now slightly more girlish, American accent. With a smile, of course. Because you can hear a smile when someone speaks, I've been told, and I hoped the smile he pictured was stunning to him.

If I'm honest, my completely biased opinion was that he sounded relatively young enough for me to date (because we're totally going to now), and quite single, so I considered this a first conversation to the rest of our lives together.

We finished our conversation - I spat out a few too many ways of saying goodbye, just to keep him on the phone and talking a little longer. Truly, I tried to think of something else I could say to him, if only to make him talk to me 2 minutes longer. Then I went to go get a paper I had printed out before, and I poked my head in J's cubicle, smile plastered to my face, "I could've talked to him for, like, an hour. His accent was SO COOL!"

Josh rolled his eyes as he responded, "Of course you did, because you're a girl."

I was a little insulted, until I thought, "No, that's exactly why. Josh was probably a little put off by him when he answered the phone. Because he's a boy. Girls automatically swoon, and boys automatically get annoyed (because they're jealous, you know)."

So I kept smiling and told Josh I was okay with that, because that phone call made my afternoon 50 times better than it was.

Then I went back to my desk and burst out in random, spontaneous giggles for the next 20 minutes as I stared at my screen, unable to focus on work anymore.

Good thing I got off work 10 minutes later.

Who am I kidding anyway. I'm still giggling and blushing over him, 5 hours later. Now I just need to find a reason to call him tomorrow, too.