#although to be clear I don't think people who absently tie knots in cherry stems are weird

[solarmorrigan]

I am the person who absentmindedly ties cherry stems, like I just think it’s fun to do and I do it all the time !! And like I know people do it to flirt but it only just occurred to me that maybe people have been thinking I was flirting ……this whole time…….same with unfeeling starburst in my mouth…..my friends and I learned to do that for fun as kids

My guy. Listen.

The year is 2012. It is summer. I am bored.

My mother has just purchased an entire bag of cherries.

I look at the bag sitting in the fridge and think to myself, "Well why the fuck not," and I start pulling stems off.

It takes a lot of trial and error and more spitty cherry stems than I'm comfortable admitting to, but I figure it out! Knot in a cherry stem!

I tuck my new, thoroughly useless skill in my back pocket and forget the entire thing.

Fast forward a year, and I am at work. My first job. I'm a server at a pancake house that may or may not be international. I have a table of about five men in military fatigues asking if we have any cherries.

"Uh. We have maraschino cherries?"

"Do they have stems?"

"Yyyyes?"

"Great, we need a bowl of those."

And since the pancake house is a lawless place, I bring them a bowl of maraschino cherries. No charge, because I'm curious. Also I don't know how to ring up a bowl of cherries. One of them deigns to explain that they're seeing who can tie a knot in a cherry stem, and without thinking, I reply, "Oh! I can do that!"

The table erupts. It is at that point that I remember this is technically a flirting trick. I regret everything.

Half the men are demanding that I demonstrate. The other half are insisting they not get me in trouble at work. I side with the latter, not least because it's been a year since I attempted it, and I've probably forgotten how to do it.

I escape the encounter without having to demonstrate and I still get slightly better tips than usual. (Judging from the number of knotted cherry stems left on the table, not very many of them were able to figure it out.)

So anyway, I getcha, dude. I getcha.