Apparently somebody I know has a thing for me. Either that, or somebody suspects that I have a crush on him or her. This is the third time in the past two years that I’ve received a notification from a secret admirer site. Now what I want to know is, who the heck keeps marking me as their crush?

Sites like those are nothing but trouble. They have the potential to cause far too much unnecessary anxiety and grief. When the site first notified me, I was briefly tempted to enter the email addresses of all the people that I suspected. But then I realized that doing so would only confirm my status as a pawn in somebody’s manipulative game of emotional coyness. You see, I wouldn’t be surprised if I were listed as somebody’s “crush” just because an acquaintance of mine suspected that I was the one that turned her address over to some silly dating site. What’s worse, this hypothetical female acquaintance of mine might not even have a real admirer of her own, and she was merely named on somebody else’s list of suspects. The horrible web of lies may have spun wildly out of control long before the baton was ever passed along to me.

But on the slim chance that somebody I know is digging on me, I have one thing to say to you: I know you probably meant well, but you should know that I hate playing emotional games. Please toss aside the unspoken, noncommittal pretense and just take a chance. You’ll be doing us both a favor.