My little husband

Tonight I ate dinner at a Hawaiian restaurant with my parents and my husband, and near the end of the meal, as I was halfway through my Eos Tears of Dew dessert wine, my mother whispered to me that a boy was flirting with me.

I looked up to see a little boy peering over a chair that was almost taller than he was, batting his eyelashes at me. I smiled, and in the next second he was at my side, holding my hand (or rather, two of my fingers in his tiny palm).

"Would you like to dance with me?"

My first inclination was to say Sorry but No, but he looked so adorable and not as though he would be accepting No for an answer, so I asked: "But where will we dance?"

And he swept his free arm out in front of us toward the lawn area, and said: "On the grass!"

I had a bit of a buzz from my Tears of Dew and a previous glass of chardonnay, so I accepted. He pulled me up out of my seat and instructed me to hide with him behind a bush, which would allow us to make a grand entrance in front of a number of amused restaurant patrons, not the least of whom were my family, who were chortling, quite satisfied to watch me embarrass myself.

We hid behind the bush, and my new friend instructed his mother to call us out. She called us by name (at this point I'd given the boy my name), and frustrated, he stage whispered to her: "No! Say 'husband and wife!'"

"Ok, husband and wife, come on out!" she announced. We ran out onto the lawn. My little husband became bashful and held his hands to his face.

"Show her your moves!" his mother prodded. I asked him what his favorite moves were, to help get him going. He admitted to enjoying a hearty dance of twirl-around-til-you-fall-down, and demonstrated as such, after whispering to me, "By the way, I love your nail polish."

Picking himself up off the grass after the twirling dance, he considered a dance that looked suspiciously like the running man. His mother prodded him to do his "Steve Martin moves," explaining that her 5-year-old son's favorite movie is "The Pink Panther." Claiming not to remember those moves, my new little husband decided that he and I would, instead, perform the twirl-til-you-fall-down dance together, so while he twirled, I decidedly did not twirl but instead pretended to twirl in order not to actually fall down on him and break his adorable face.

I was then released back to my table with my parents and Big Husband, but my new little husband later brought me a flower to put behind my ear, proclaiming that it was my Christmas gift from him. And then he touched one of my earrings delicately and said, "I like your earrings, too."

And then my little husband left me for the Hawaiian dancer performing the hula on stage.