Mariana was a student at university. She was approached by a young man whom she had never met before. He asked if they might have a conversation in private and with the greatest confidence. Mariana agreed and said maybe they could go to the café for a coffee. At least other people would be about and she would feel more comfortable.
The young man was very pleasant; in fact quite charming. He was quite good-looking too Mariana thought. He agreed to the coffee and off they went. He said he worked as an undercover agent within the university. He only pretended to be studying myrmecology. He had no intention of becoming a myrmecologist. He needed someone, a complete stranger, to do a small task. Would Mariana be prepared to help?
Mariana said she would, depending of course on what the task might be and how time consuming. After all, she had her exams in edaphology coming up in a month.
The task, said Max (for that was his name), is simply to go to a particular student party, casually approach a specified person, and say a pre-set phrase. They would hand you an envelope. She was to bring it to this same café at eleven the next morning and give it to him.
That was simple! The secret phrase was “Do you wear pyjamas in bed or nothing at all?” and the specific person was a man. He would be wearing a white shirt with rolled sleeves, light blue jeans with patches, and have one of those old-fashion windup watches on his wrist. The party was this evening.
The room at the party was quite crowded. Mariana wandered around the party-goers for quite some time looking for her man. It was quite difficult because there were a lot of students at the party that she knew of course, and they all wanted her to stop and talk about nothing. The trouble was that there seemed to be two men in the room with white shirts and rolled up sleeves, patched jeans, and a wrist watch. Mariana approached the one she thought looked the most like a spy.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi”, he said.
“Do you wear pyjamas in bed or nothing at all?”
“WTF?” said the young man but not in abbreviated form. And then he repeated in a louder and cynical voice, “Do I wear pyjamas in bed or nothing at all?”
“Shhh! Sorry,” said Mariana. Clearly she had picked the wrong one of the two. It was rather embarrassing. She approached the second guy.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi”, he said.
“Do you wear pyjamas in bed or nothing at all?” whispered Mariana.
They guy pulled a small envelope from his back pocket and handed it to her. It wasn’t sealed. “Make sure you read what’s inside,” he said.
Mariana took out the slip of paper inside the envelope and read it:
“Happy 21st Birthday, Mariana!”
The whole room burst into “Happy Birthday dear Mariana”.
“We knew if we told you,” said Mariana’s friend Angelina stepping forward from nowhere, “we knew if you heard we were having your 21st birthday party that you’d say you had your edaphology exams coming up in a month. So we planned this.”
Then Max, the fellow who had initiated the whole scheme, announced that he didn’t wear pyjamas but would she like to meet in the café tomorrow at eleven anyway?
And that is how the myrmecologist and the edaphologist met and lived happily ever after.
Mariana could have been in danger trusting anyone with that name. I’m glad all is well!
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OMG – I only just realized – although I’m not surprised he turned out in the long run to be an archbastard.
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That is more like it Bruce!
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I usually get my names out of the daily obituaries in the morning paper. Unfortunately it only had your first name and the person was a lot older than 54.
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Well I do like that last part!
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Sanguinous hades, what a sweet story.
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Sweetie is my middle name.
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Snicker.
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Is that lass taking pictures through her belly button? Or has she just got ants in her pants? Can’t be too careful you know.
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Fleas.
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A match made in heaven! Or at University.
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From memory University and Heaven are not quite the same thing!
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Well, I think that’s true enough.
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The story has ingredients of a crime thriller (with a dash of sleaze) and the narrative does justice to the part. Then it gets surrealistic and I loved that too. All along the way I was expecting Mariana to land in serious soup but, lo and behold, they slept happily in pyjamas in the bed ever after!
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Thank you – and thank goodness you know how to spell these Indian words such as pyjamas!
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Mariana must be a very well grounded person, what with all the edaphology studies and all.
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I see you’re a Google user – although I appreciate you being (apparently) the only one in the universe who needed to know the meaning of myrmecologist and edaphologist
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Google no mas! I gleaned all of my information from Duckduckgo, and I used the Brave search engine, which let’s me collect Bitcoin as I browse. I’m almost up to five tenths of a cent!
Sent from my Android.
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Regards to your Android from my Adenoids (I think they’re related). I too use Duckduckgo – but have never heard of Brave but shall explore.
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That sounds right. I’m pretty sold on Brave.
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Great story, although a little embarrassing for Mariana with her first mistake – and a twisted way to get her to a surprise party. I’m pretty sure I know what a myrmecologist (studies ant eaters) is but what is an edaphologist?
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