So another hysterical episode unfolded at my assisted living facility yesterday, immediately after Bingo.
Now, Charlene is one of our most devoted Bingo players. At 93 years old, she’s sharp as a tack, with only the occasional senior moment that sneaks in when nobody’s looking. Charlene is confined to a wheelchair after breaking both hips, but don’t let that fool you—she can scoot that chair around faster than some people drive golf carts.
When she was younger and upright, I suspect she was a tall woman. Even seated, she towers over most of the old dears, even those who can still walk. She’s also what my grandmother would have called “well-built,” and judging by events that unfolded later, I think Mother Nature blessed her quite generously in the “chest department”.
On Fridays, we play for the grand prize of a whole dollar on the Full Card Bingo. To you and me, that’s pocket lint money. To these folks, it’s the equivalent of winning the Powerball. What they’d actually spend it on, Lord only knows!
Charlene didn’t win the dollar jackpot, but she did win a regular Bingo round and proudly collected her quarter. You’d have thought she’d just purchased a beach house.
She’s from the Midwest and speaks with a twang delivered through a high-pitched voice that occasionally sounds like a smoke alarm trying to sing country music. If she’s losing, she’ll tease the winners with things like, “I love you,” or, “We’re gonna talk later.” Everyone smiles sweetly while secretly wishing she’d lower the volume by about three notches.
Then there’s old dear ole Dick Barnaby.
Dick turned 100 this March. He was still driving around his neighborhood in New York at 97 until a nasty bout of flu turned into pneumonia. These days he’s on oxygen and living with us.
Dick is as deaf as a fence post. Since I’ve been there—a little over a month—he’s gone through enough hearing aids to stock a small electronics store. The oxygen tubing and hearing aid wires seem locked in a daily battle to the death. The hearing aids lose the battle every time.
Yesterday, however, hearing aid number 8 had been repaired, and Dick was thrilled to be back at Bingo.
Now Dick is a big man with a booming voice. When he shouts “BINGO!” he does it with the enthusiasm of a cruise ship horn. Because he can’t hear himself, he assumes nobody else can either. Every time he wins, half the ladies jump out of their seats, despite claiming they can’t hear a thing.
And yesterday, Dick won the coveted one-dollar Full Card.
His “BINGO!” nearly registered on the Richter scale.
This was after I’d spent the entire game standing beside him, yelling numbers directly into his orbit and letting him read my lips like we were negotiating a hostage release.
Anyway, after Bingo, everyone started migrating toward the Uno table. We left Dick where he was because moving him, his oxygen machine, his tubing, and his rather substantial pee bag felt like a workplace hazard waiting to happen.
Charlene came scooting over in her wheelchair, determined to secure a seat and, more importantly, stash her precious quarter winnings into her shorts pocket.
In the process, she hoisted up her shirt.
Quite a bit.
What Charlene failed to realize was that her once-voluptuous bosom that had now migrated south over the decades, was now making a guest appearance above her shorts waistband and everyone around her had their eyes locked on the whole spectacle.
And unfortunately—or perhaps fortunately—Dick Barnaby had a front-row seat.
Now Dick may be deaf, but his eyesight is apparently still operating in glorious high definition.
I watched a grin slowly spread across his face.
Which then turned into a very large grin.
The kind of grin a man gets when he unexpectedly stumbles upon something he probably hasn’t locked his eyes on in a couple of decades.
I said, as quietly as I could to a somewhat deaf 93 year old, “Charlene, you’d better put those puppies away before you give poor Dick a coronary.”
Without lowering her shirt, she looked at me and said most indignantly, “Nothing’s showing.”
I burst out laughing.
“Well then,” I said, “why is Dick suddenly the happiest man in Florida?”
At that point, we both looked over at Dick.
Apparently deciding Charlene shouldn’t feel embarrassed alone, he had lifted up his own shirt till it was just under his chin.
There sat Dick’s impressive belly and his own set of droopy man-boobs, proudly on display for the entire room.
For a moment, nobody spoke.
Then the room exploded.
People were laughing so hard they could barely breathe. Charlene was laughing. Dick was laughing. I was laughing so hard I nearly needed oxygen myself.
Honestly, where else can a quarter, a bingo card, and two centenarian flashers create the highlight of your workday?
Duncan had gotten dressed and said he’d meet me down at the hotel’s fancy restaurant. Now, ordinarily, I’d be thrilled—because I love food. Especially good food. But this time? I took my sweet time getting ready. Not because I wanted to impress Duncan, but because I was still fuming over the “oops, only one suite left” situation.
I wasn’t exactly leaping at the chance to head downstairs. Something in my gut told me this evening was going to be weird—and not the fun, spontaneous kind of weird. More like the “I’m about to be emotionally ambushed” kind. If I could’ve buried my head in the minibar like an ostrich and pretended none of this was happening, I would’ve.
But instead, I took my time getting dressed—part stalling tactic, part emotional armor. I wasn’t going to waltz in all sunshine and sparkles like I hadn’t just been wedged into a suite-sharing situation I never signed up for. No way. I decided to go with a look I like to call disengaged but dazzling. Think: hostage chic, but with lip gloss.
By the time I floated into the restaurant, I was composed—at least on the outside. On the inside? Still rage-simmering with a hint of “how-do-I-escape-this-trip-with-my-sanity?”
We had just ordered our first course when I decided—against all better judgment—to have a glass of wine. Maybe it would help smooth over my mood. Maybe it would just help me sit through another night of Duncan talking about wood grain finishes.
But then—just as I took that first hesitant sip—he leaned in.
“I’ve really loved our time together,” he said, eyes soft and serious. “I’m in love with you. I’ve been in love with you since you worked for me. This trip… was so I could finally tell you. I want to marry you.”
Cue internal collapse. My heart froze. My jaw didn’t drop (I have some dignity), but my stomach absolutely did a backflip.
Why was it always the men I had zero interest in who insisted on loving me with Olympic-level intensity?
Then—as if this couldn’t get worse—he pulled out a little black velvet box.
Oh, sweet mercy.
He didn’t even get down on one knee. Just handed it over. Like a contract. Or an unsolicited invoice for emotional damage.
Inside? A diamond. A very large, very sparkly, very innocent-looking diamond. Too bad it was giving me a full-body anxiety rash.
Panic!
I was speechless. Not in the happy, teary-eyed, “oh my word this is the best day of my life” kind of way. More like the stunned, wide-eyed, “I might faint into this bread roll” kind of way. And I could only pray Duncan wasn’t mistaking my silence for the romantic kind of overwhelmed.
His lips were still moving—definitely still talking. Something about love… forever… destiny, maybe? I honestly couldn’t tell. All I could focus on was the twinkling diamond glaring at me from inside its velvet cell like a sparkly little accomplice to this crime of confusion.
Then came the question: “Are you going to say something?”
Oh, Duncan. I wish I had.
To this day, I have no memory of my actual response. I think it was something weak and non-committal like, “Wow… I’m so honored you feel this way.” Which, let’s be real, is the international code for: “Absolutely not, but I’m too polite to say it yet.”
That’s when full-blown panic took over. I began listing every possible reason why I would make a terrible wife. Surely, surely, logic would win the day.
I was too emotionally unavailable. I didn’t know what I wanted in life. I still had commitment issues… with gym memberships, let alone marriage.
But Duncan? Unfazed.
He had a counter for every excuse I gave—calm, confident, relentless. It suddenly made perfect sense why he was such a successful lawyer. I was basically presenting Exhibit A for “This Is Not Going to Happen,” and he was expertly cross-examining it into oblivion.
Meanwhile, I was spiraling.
How on earth was I going to turn this down without nuking my future business prospects… and possibly a shot at international travel and financial salvation?
Then the food arrived.
But while Duncan tucked in with the joy of a man who’d just proposed and assumed it went well, I could barely chew. Every bite felt like it came with a side of anxiety. I washed it all down with more wine—hoping it might give me either the courage to be honest, or a nap I wouldn’t wake up from until we were back in Durban.
He, of course, misread my wine consumption as a celebration. Me? I was mourning my exit strategy.
Couch Couture and Midnight Madness
Eventually, sometime between the cheesecake and my third glass of liquid denial, Duncan asked the inevitable: “So… do you have an answer?”
Panic. I stalled. “I’ll need some time to think about it,” I said, in the most non-committal, conflict-avoiding tone I could manage.
A flicker of disappointment passed over his face—followed, interestingly, by what looked like relief. I hadn’t said yes (praise be), but I hadn’t said no either. Just… a diplomatic holding pattern. He could still hope, and I could still breathe.
But then came the real challenge: returning to the suite.
It was still too early to turn in, but Duncan announced cheerfully that he was calling it a night. “Oh, okay! Good night!” I chirped—maybe just a bit too brightly—as I made a dramatic beeline for the miniature couch like it was a perfectly reasonable sleeping arrangement and not a glorified footstool.
Now, let’s remember—this was the 1990s in South Africa. We didn’t have cable or streaming or anything remotely entertaining past 10 p.m. What we did have was SABC, our one sad little channel. On Saturday nights, the movie would end promptly at 10, followed by a string of solemn religious programming (think: pipe organs and softly spoken sermons), and then—if you were still awake—the grand finale: a test pattern and the national anthem. That was it. Entertainment closed for the night like a tuck shop on a public holiday.
Midnight hit. Exhaustion hit harder.
And that couch? It had all the comfort of a shoebox lined with regret.
I weighed my options. Cling to this glorified bench and wake up with spinal trauma? Or admit defeat and slide silently into the enormous king-sized bed?
I chose survival.
So, I layered every item of clothing in my suitcase like a human onion, crept across the room, and eased into the very far edge of the mattress—as in, one accidental roll and I’d be on the floor. Mission: do not touch Duncan.
I must’ve passed out instantly.
Because the next thing I knew, I was under attack.
Snore Wars : The Final Deterrent
I jolted awake to find Duncan looming over me, wielding a pillow like a weapon and hissing: “Carol! Will you STOP SNORING?!”
Apparently, the allergies I’d been ignoring all day had blossomed into a full-blown, symphonic, soul-shaking snore-fest. Duncan was livid.
Whether it was the noise, or the shock of seeing me lying there—bundled like a human burrito in every item of clothing I owned—it clearly spelled out what I hadn’t managed to say over dinner: this was never going to be a love story.
He stormed off without a word, stomped onto the balcony, lit a cigarette, and glared at the horizon like it had personally offended him. Bare-chested. Sleep shorts. Smouldering with betrayal.
I did feel bad. Sort of. But mostly? Immensely relieved. I no longer needed a carefully crafted “it’s not you, it’s me” monologue. My nasal passages had done the heavy lifting. My snoring had spoken the unspoken.
Needless to say, the pot of gold I thought Duncan represented turned out to be an old rusted tin can with holes in the bottom.
The drive home? Painfully silent. So silent, you could hear my regret shifting awkwardly in the back seat.
What was I supposed to say? “Sorry my nasal passages betrayed you”?
And the more the kilometres rolled by, the more irritated I became. Had this whole “business venture” just been a romantic ruse? A bait-and-switch wrapped in handcrafted wooden bowls?
I hadn’t seen his kindness as anything but… well, kindness. And sure, maybe I’d laughed at his jokes or smiled politely over dinner—but that’s not a binding contract. It’s basic social grace.
By the time we pulled up to my car in Umkomaas, I couldn’t decide if I felt more guilty for not feeling guilty, or just mad that the whole awkward circus had even happened.
Either way, the fairy tale was over. Not with a glass slipper, but with a snort and a slam of a car door.
On Reflection….
I never heard from Duncan again.
And honestly, I didn’t expect to. He was a good man—kind, respectful, and genuine—and while I did miss him, I couldn’t bring myself to reach out. I didn’t want to give him false hope or rub salt into what was likely still a pretty raw wound.
The whole episode didn’t leave me feeling triumphant. Quite the opposite, actually. It chipped away at my already-fragile self-esteem. I’d hurt someone who didn’t deserve it—however unintentionally—and that truth stuck with me. What stung even more was the uncomfortable realization that I had been this close to a better future. Stability. Travel. A solid, kind-hearted man. But I let it all go… because, if I’m being brutally honest, he didn’t look like Brad Pitt. Turns out, I was that shallow.
The whole Duncan chapter became one of those cringe-worthy “what was I thinking” moments I often take to God in prayer. Thankfully, in His endless grace, He has led me into a spacious place—a life where He truly has turned all things for good (Romans 8:28). The shame, the regret, the bad choices? He’s repurposed it all.
And while I still have a suitcase full of questionable decisions and terrifying detours to share, I tell these stories not to glamorize the mess—but to hopefully make you laugh, and more importantly, to warn younger girls: Get healed. Get whole. Don’t waste years wandering down dead-end roads like I did.
Tales from the Tangled Trail 