Playing the Field for a Minute

I received an email from my husband today:

“Do we need to talk about anything?”

Below his words was a forwarded email from Apple: 

Dear Heather, 

There was a billing problem with the service you subscribed to: Clover Dating App. To continue enjoying this service, please update your credit card information. 

Regards, 

Apple

Grant has an Android phone and does not subscribe to any Apple apps, but he still gets the email notifications on all purchases which keeps all us iPhone users who share the same Apple account in check.

I went down the list of our iPhone/iPad/iPod/XBox users. 

I knew Duncan had only just recently separated his Apple account from ours so I sent him a picture of the message from Apple along with the text: 

“Hey there. Any chance you happened to subscribe to a dating service under my Apple account? I may or may not be in trouble with your dad. He thinks I’m playing the field.”

His response was three laughing face emojis and a “WOW.”

I wasn’t sure if that was a guilty response or that he was saying WOW because he thought I was guilty. It’s hard to tell people’s tone with texts.

His follow up was “I would not get an app like that” which I mostly believed. 

Dillin has been self sufficient for years when it comes to all things techy, so I sent a group text to Dan and David:

“Did one of you two fancy young gents download a Clover Dating app? Your dad is concerned I’m trying to find someone new to replace him so fess up and get me out of trouble.”

David: “I did not.” (This overly simplified response COULD imply guilt. Or it could be he was in class and not supposed to be looking at his phone.)

Daniel: “No” with another damn laughing face emoji followed by “I should though.” (Another possible guilty response: the reverse psychology approach. He is taking Psych 101 this semester and getting way too smart for his own good.)

This just left Mitchel and Maria to ask. But Mitchel was in the middle of two days of basketball tryouts so I didn’t want to stress him out over the idea that I might soon be dating someone new instead of his dad so I left him out of the texting inquisition.

I CALLED Maria because I can always tell by her voice when she is lying. She just laughed and said someone probably hacked our account and that I should just change the password. That seemed EXTREMELY suspicious to me. Especially when she abruptly changed the discussion to the Disney Plus channel that everyone in the family seems to be super excited about. Except me. Quite frankly I have enough pressure keeping up with Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu and YouTube channels I subscribe to. I need to take a vacation to get caught up on all my shows. Maria was worried that she was going to be bumped off because you can only have 7 different profiles per account. “Your dad and I share a profile on all the other streaming apps so why not Disney Plus? We share everything.”

But then an evil little voice whispered in my brain: “Or DO WE?” I DID take my wedding ring off in the TSA Security Line last week. That’s where it starts you know: one tiny step in the wrong direction. Maybe after that brief moment of not being married, my alter ego got caught up and subscribed to the service just to have some creative fodder to write about: all the men I COULD have if I WANTED to have them. And what’s with all the laughing emojis from the boys? Am I not date-able? Is that so far off the spectrum of reality? 

After I had my little mental temper tantrum I realized my thinking was very small picture focused. Besides the obvious fact that I don’t have TIME for a dating app (it’s hard enough choosing what series to watch in the evening before I go to bed), I have big picture ideas that mostly involve keeping Grant on my team. 

So I changed the password to our Apple account. 

Mitchel’s probably going to be super bummed about all those girls he will miss out on.