Be Careful!!!!

“Be Careful!!” - This was the advice I received one fine evening from a lady over the dinner table. I had been invited to a dinner by my colleague and in the course we were chatting about my recent trip. In the process I happened to mention about a gentleman I met in the airport who was around fifty years old and single and shared some common interests with me about traveling and books. He also happened to be from Abu Dhabi. So I was telling my friends that we had planned to meet up this weekend. I didn’t even finish that statement when everybody sitting in the table started asking me to be careful.

Now I am not that dumb to miss the obvious, but what struck me was that after twenty-five years I can imagine some young kid telling his friends that he met a 50+ single guy and his friends asking him to be careful. The reason that this worries me is because that “guy” would be me.

I really don’t know why the society as we know thinks all single guys after a certain age are going to be of that kind. It’s unfair for people to make this kind of a biased decision just because they happened to hear a few anecdotes from tabloids and gossips. I know that being single could be tough but this was unexpected. I was ready for a long lonely happy life but not seriously prepared enough for being branded like this.

Somehow I think this situation would be far better than getting stuck in quicksand.

ps: Somebody has promised me that all my expenses to Machu Picchu in Peru will be borne if I stayed single till September 11 2009.