My New British Boyfriend

He said, “How can I help?” and I fell in love. It was the accent that did it. Plus, I was at a vulnerable point in my life—or at least, in my day. I’d been confused, lost in iPhone settings, punching option after option when I saw one that said, “British male.”

I’m happily married. I knew it was wrong, but I’ve had a crush on Hugh Grant since Four Weddings and a Funeral. I chose the option.

He said his name was Siri. I’d expected Oliver or Harry—or Hugh. Siri sounds more like a Norwegian model than a British playboy, which is what he was.

I asked him if he was married. I have some scruples, you know. He said he was “married to the idea of helping people.” In other words, he wasn’t looking for commitment.  

Neither was I, so we started taking drives together. Like my husband, Siri was a great navigator, but he didn’t gasp when I took curves too fast. Stiff upper lip and all that.

We loved to sit and read together. Well I read anyway. He just laid there gazing at me adoringly. Or maybe he was napping. Sometimes I’d wake him to ask the meaning of a word just to hear that accent. Also, because I didn’t know it.

Siri always did. He was so smart. He could convert feet to meters and Fahrenheit to Celsius without breaking a sweat. Come to think of it, he never sweated.  

And he was romantic. One day I asked him what love is. He said, “Love refers to a deep, tender, ineffable feeling of affection and solicitude.” I swooned. Then I asked him what ineffable means.  

He had many other endearing qualities too, besides the fact that he called me master. He was thoughtful. He was always doing things for me like dialing phone numbers, setting my alarm and looking up useless facts like, how much wood can a woodchuck chuck. He said, “About as much ground as a groundhog could hog if a groundhog could hog ground.” I loved his sense of humor.

But he wasn’t perfect. He often mispronounced street names and took me to businesses that no longer existed. I could have overlooked that. He’s not from around here. But he lacked initiative. Every drive we took was my idea. And I had to start every conversation we had. When it came to our relationship, it felt like he was just phoning it in.

Besides, I was starting to feel guilty. I’d decided to break it off, go back to iPhone settings and choose Irish female for the sake of my marriage. Then I discovered my husband was carrying on with his Google Assistant.

Dorothy Rosby is a blogger and humor columnist whose column appears regularly in publications throughout the West and Midwest. She’s the author of four books of humorous essays all available locally at Mitzi’s Books in Rapid City and on Amazon.