Alone I'm not

Things at work have been hectic for a while and on top of added work pressure we also said goodbye to our team leader who transfered to another team. This left a vacancy in our team that a few of my colleagues fought to get but alas for them they brought in someone new. An outsider. She's about 4 years younger than me, married, has a child, travelled around the world and has literally sailed the 7 seas in one of those big wooden ships with the huge sails that need to be hoisted or whatever you call it and finally she's also just passed her bar examination is a full fledged lawyer. She's 30 years old and completely lovely. If she didn't wear gorgeous footwear I'd totally hate her.

Anyway, with new people comes introductions. All of us (we are 6 people her included) sat around this massive boardroom table and had that "get to know each other" thing. The kind where you don't know what and how much to say. It's not like they can remember anyway. This was about a month before she joined. Well, we sat there and people were talking about children, pests pets, spouses, age, where they lived, hobbies etc. Then it came to me, and this is not word by word because remember, this was a little over a month ago.

I'm Pete, I'm 29 years old, live in the city centre, I have a brother and a niece and nephew, spendt a year and a half at our Copenhagen branch and I work with collection from our debtors to whom we've financed and leased cars and boats. When I'm not doing that, I'm tweeting, facebooking, watching trashy tv, reading naughty books and being a filthy, raging hormonal gay reading books, travelling, interested in film history, studying to become a legal secretary and hanging out with friends.

This was pretty a pretty decent spin if you ask me. Even with the obvious stutter at times because I'm not good with meeting new people for the first time and having all eyes on me. Ask me something completely work related and I'll be waving my arms and talking for hours but that's not about me then. Our new team leader then started a month later. Then there was some discussion about what I was doing on a Friday night and I was asked "are you single?". Yes, I'm single, living by myself, call it what you will really. Frankly I didn't think I'd care whatever people called it. That is until another colleague said I was alone. Just alone. Not living alone, no, no, alone. Just alone. She might as well have said I was lonely.

This actually annoyed me a bit because I'm not 'alone' or 'lonely'. I have friends, people around me, I just don't happen to live with anyone. If that's a choice I've made or past/future boyfriends who decided it, that is irrelevant. I like being by myself, living by myself or whatever you call it. Living by myself has many advantages in my opinion and I don't think I could share. As a child I wasn't good at sharing my toys with the other children either. Anyway, I told myself 'smile through it dear, smile through it' and I did. Of course she didn't mean anything by it, but she's been married for so long that if she was living by herself she'd probably feel lonely and alone. Bless her.

Another term I don't like is 'Singleton'. I don't live in Singleton so no, I'm not a Singleton.