A Single Mom Found Love

choi

Sharon Harrigan, Escaping the Friend Zone. New York Times, Aug 21, 2016 (In the Sundays' column "Modern Love").
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/2 ... gle-mom-dating.html

Note:
(a) "How could a mother lie about being a mother? Not ethically, but logistically? Maybe a liar would wait until the man is smitten, then spring the child on him and shout, 'Surprise! "

spring (vt): "to produce or disclose suddenly or unexpectedly"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spring
(b) "I met a man who humble-bragged about the $10,000-a-month child support his ex-wife demanded for his daughters' clothing allowance."

humblebrag (n, vi): "make an ostensibly modest or self-deprecating statement with the actual intention of drawing attention to something of which one is proud"
www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/de ... _english/humblebrag
(c) "I was the one who contacted him. We had both joined a dating service called * * * The Right Stuff, after seeing an ad for it in The New Yorker. 'I liked your profile,” he wrote in his first email, 'but didn't contact you because you have a child.' * * * He responded to my first email: 'A redheaded editor in Brooklyn — what could be better? But dating a woman with a child would be complicated, as I'm sure you know."

The woman contacted the man first, although the man had noticed her profile but chose not to act, because she had a kid. When he was contacted for the first time, he wrote back, with the TWO remarks -- among others -- found in the quotation.
(d) "That summer we both had travel plans, so a whole month passed before our first date — or our first 'playdate,' I guess. * * * Months later, James met my son, Jonah. * * * The next day, Jonah asked, 'Can I have another playdate with my new friend?' "

play date
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Play_date  

(e) "An economist, he would answer a question with: 'Probability of 1.' * * * Trying to think like a statistician, I [an editor] put my odds at 50-50. Or, as an economist would say: probability 0.5."
(i) almost surely
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almost_surely
("In probability theory, one says that an event happens almost surely * * * if it happens with probability one. * * * Almost never describes the opposite of almost surely: an event that happens with probability zero happens almost never" / section 2 " 'Almost sure' versus 'sure' ")
(ii) Why the range of probability is always between 0 and 1?

Basics of Probability. Department of Mathematics, University of Arizona, Aug 27 and Sept 1, 2009
http://math.arizona.edu/~jwatkins/a-basics.pdf
(page 1: definition of S ("sample space": all possible outcomes), A ("event") and P ("probability") / page 4: "[section] 4 Equally Likely Outcomes, where P = 0.5 (plus explaining why the range is 0 to 1)
(iii) There is, in the whole world, just one economist named James Harrigan. Now in Virginia, he was in New York City.

Professor James Harrigan. Department of Economics, University of Virginia, undated
http://people.virginia.edu/~jh4xd/

, whose "CV" shows he was
"Research Officer and Senior Economist, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 2005-2008. Senior Economist 1997-2004, Economist 1996-1997."

(f) "Next we hiked Bear Mountain."

Bear Mountain (Hudson Highlands)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear_Mountain_(Hudson_Highlands)
(Elevation 1,289 ft (393 m) )