Around 100 years ago, when I was young, a friend dragged me into a disco and we bopped around for a bit before sitting down for a drink. A young man at an adjacent table addressed me.
"Do you have the time?" he asked.
"7:30," I responded, having consulted my watch.
"No no, do you have the time?" he said more insistently.
"Half-past seven," I said more clearly.
One more round of this, then I appealed to the lad's companion. "Is your friend foreign? Does he not know English very well?"
"No," he said, amused, "it's a chat-up line. He says do you have the time and you're supposed to say something like if you have the inclination. He really wants to ask you to dance."
"Why not just ask me to dance then?" I asked, confused.
"Oh, ok. Would you like to dance?"
"No."
My friend said afterwards that she didn't know why I had turned him down as he was "gorgeous". I said he seemed a bit of an idiot.