Suspicions

Many years ago I volunteered at the USO in Israel. My work meant that I'd meet hundreds of American sailors and marines every day there was a ship in port. In six years of volunteering, out of the more than 100,000 Americans who came through the USO's doors, I've made dozens of friends and communicated with them almost regularly after they left my hometown. One of them is my husband today. It was not intentional. I had no plans to fall in love with an American. It just happened. Thing is, I met him only six months after I began volunteering at the USO, and I stayed volunteering there for another five years later. This gave me the opportunity to compare him to the thousands upon thousands of Americans I met after him.

It was love at first sight and it was true love.

Four years after I met him, a ship pulled into port on a Jewish holiday. It was one of those fasting holidays, when all restaurants and coffee places are closed. So myself and a couple of other volunteers decided to invite some Americans from the ship over to my friend's house and have a nice dinner there, on the rooftop in the open air. It was about a dozen people. One of them, called Alonzo sat across from me. Alonzo was a big black guy (in Israel we don't use the term African American). Big - meaning he was about 6'4" and overall large. Me - I'm a small pettite 5'3". We chatted for several hours. Had a blast. Talked about everything under the shining sun.

Turns out, in a funny "it's a small world after all" that Alonzo knew my American boyfriend (today my husband). He knew him because he worked with him on another ship. This is one of those "stranger than fiction" coincidences. The funny part was that Alonzo has heard my boyfriend talk about me incessantly and he kept laughing at him telling him that I'm probably already with someone else. Well now that Alonzo has met me, and heard ME talk incessantly about my boyfriend, he knew the truth - we were made for each other.

Alonzo and I exchanged addresses (no email at the time) and phone numbers. We intended on keeping in touch because I thought it was hilarious that he knew my boyfriend.

A couple of years after I got married, I got a phone call from a woman who identified herself as "Alonzo's wife." Apparently, she found his "black book." It had phone numbers and addresses and she suspected he was having an affair, so she began calling each one in the book. She "confronted" me about it on the phone. I couldn't stop laughing. How do I explain to this woman that Alonzo is SO NOT MY TYPE?! I tried to gently tell her that I'm married to someone he worked with, and proceeded to tell her the entire story. She seemed okay with it but warned me not to contact him.

Another side story - a year after I got married, one of the Americans I made friends with and communicated with quite a bit called me up and told me he's not allowed to stay in touch with me. He got married and his wife forbade him from contacting me by phone or mail. I had no idea where this came from. I never had a relationship with this guy other than we talked a whole lot. And I would have never dreamed of even flirting with him because he was a male chauvinist and I didn't care for it. I just had a good time talking to him about everything under the shining sun.

So yeah, I profess guilty for enjoying to talk to men quite a bit. Why not women - simply because we don't share the same interests. It's tough for me to find a woman who is into technology and gadgets, architecture and construction, books and dogs, programming and mathematics, politics and religion. Yeah, I miss those years from the USO when I met so many men to talk to.