Today, class, we will discuss the fuzzy thin line that exists between the realm of the sweet and the realm of the downright creepy.

And to aid our discussion of this matter, I have brought along helpful props, because I’m an educator and this is what we do.

Behold, Jennifer’s flowers. What I have here are two yellow roses, each wrapped in its own elegant sleeve of tissue paper and plastic.

These sweet-smelling symbols of love were found, not clamped between the teeth of some romance novel Lothario, but strapped to a windshield of a car parked outside a dollar store.

That’s where Jennifer found them, all right. It was Mother’s Day afternoon and she was just exiting the Dollar General in Auburn with her daughter when she spotted these avatars of devotion on her car, stems lovingly tucked beneath a windshield.

“It was so weird,” says Jennifer. “We were only in the store for maybe six minutes.”

Ah, but six minutes is plenty of time for a real master of romance. And this master of romance had no intention of vanishing into a state of sexy anonymity. No, this dollar store Casanova was right up front about his feelings of l’amore, having left a note along with the flowers to announce his intentions.

Sort of, anyway. The shrewd seducer had scribbled a fast message — on the back of a store receipt, yet — describing himself and the vehicle he was driving. At the end of the short note, he listed his phone number, no doubt in high hopes of a romantic interlude to follow.

Which I grant you is not exactly Shakespeare-level verse, yet there is something seductive and endearing about this Romeo’s concise and direct way. This charmer felt no need to go rambling on about “lazy-pacing clouds sailing on the bosom of the air” or any of that wordy nonsense.

Who needs a moonlit balcony, anyway, when you’ve got the Dollar General at high noon?

And the man’s unique overture wasn’t completely without effect: Jennifer and her 18-year-old daughter found themselves momentarily stunned by the unexpected gesture.

“My daughter and I talked about it,” Jennifer says. “I was like, I don’t know if this is really sweet or really creepy. Most of the time, I just have guys grunt at me and say inappropriate things, so we were like, well… Maybe it IS just sweet.”

It was sweet enough, anyway, that Jennifer felt compelled to text the phone number scribbled on that crumpled store receipt with offers of big savings shining through the paper.

Why did she do it?

“Curiosity,” she says. Nothing more, nothing less, and you can understand her reasoning. The magazines are always full of stories, after all, of deep and lasting love that blossomed from the most innocuous of occasions.

People meet and fall in love in the strangest ways. Sometimes fate plays a hand, and who knows? Maybe this Cyrano de Bergerac of the Dollar General was really and truly smitten with Jennifer, and could this be the beginning of something truly grand?

In a word: Nope.

“It quickly turned out that he was more than happy to ‘pick’ me or my 18-year-old daughter,” Jennifer says, half glum, half amused.

This bringer of flowers, as it turns out, wasn’t revealing himself out of shyness because he was so deeply and passionately in love with Jennifer.

He was more like a fisherman, casting his line over a parking lot and waiting to reel in whatever he found that would nibble on his lure.

“It was a nice reminder,” Jennifer says, “that curiosity killed the cat.”

Not that the man — I call him “Buck Fifty” because I feel like that’s the average cost of things at the Dollar General these days — should be condemned completely.

Here was an adventurous man trying something new, by golly. He could have just stayed home and surfed the dating sites like everybody else, but no. Not this crafty fellow. This guy goes his own way, and I think there should be some credit here for the novelty of the enterprise at the very least.

Although the text exchange that followed DOES kind of teeter on that aforementioned precipice between endearing and uncomfortable.

“You 2 are beautiful,” Buck Fifty wrote in a lovelorn text message, “and love your daughter’s smile. By the way, couldn’t stop staring, ha ha.”

I suppose if you’re the right kind of gal, you might get all swoony over a bold approach like this, but not this protective mother. Jennifer didn’t swoon at all. Instead, once she realized what the dollar store Don Juan was up to, she ended the conversation. There would be no violins and crashing ocean waves at the Dollar General on this day.

“It was no longer potentially sweet,” Jennifer says. “We had crossed the creepy point.”

And so ends the sad or sweet, syrupy or unsettling saga of passions sought at the discount store. Buck Fifty gave it his all and came up short.

You may either celebrate him for his efforts or run out quick to secure a restraining order, the choice is entirely yours.

Me, I’ll give the dude soft and brief applause just as a nod to the originality of his moves. Then I’ll probably jump in my car and lock the door behind me.

You never can be too careful.

Lots of weirdos out there these days.

Mark LaFlamme is an award-winning Sun Journal reporter and columnist. He’s covered the nighttime police beat since 1994.