Missed Connection



I was on BART the other day (name of the bay area subway system), when I saw a young woman who looked familiar sitting across from me. A second look mostly assured me that I was wrong and I didn't know her and I didn't give it another thought- Well maybe one or two more, about her attractive nerdyness.

Latter we happened to get off at the same stop, file past the door side by side, and walk towards the same descending platform. The coincidence got to be too much and I turned to her and asked: "Do I look familiar to you?" She apparently was so freaked out by the question that she just crumbled into a flustered pile of panicky stutters and apologies to the effect of "No I don't think so, sorry." Seeing how overwhelmed she was by the situation I decided to abort mission and said "Huh... You look familiar to me, but maybe I'm just trippin'." she continued to apologetically sputter that she didn't recognize me as I walked away.

She ran up behind me just past the turn stiles, and with new found resolution asked me "Wait! Were you the guy here last night trying to catch a cab?" I said I wasn't and continued on my way. Perhaps a bit brusquely.

So far a normal story of two young people, cloaked in their internal cocoons, brought on by mass transit, trying in some small way to have a real human interaction. Failing, for better or worse, and sailing on like two ships in the night.

But what happens next is where things get a bit weird. I had recently just finished an awesome graphic novel that was a collection of comics drawn by different artists illustrating real and imagined personal adds from newspapers and Craig's List, specifically those categorized as "missed connections". It works like this; two people who shared a moment against an anonymous urban backdrop, who didn't have a chance to exchange contact information, can later post a missed connection ad hoping on the off chance the other person sees it and gets in touch.

The book was mostly funny, sometimes poignant, romantic and sad, and reminded me of the whole concept of missed connections personal adds.

So I thought I would check Craig's List to see if this anonymous, flustered, mousy young woman had posted something, never thinking she actually would. But low and behold she had! The post is as follows:



So I sent her an email, and we got together for lunch a couple times since then. Unfortunately, as this is real life, the story ended much less climatically than expected, and though we got along well, and she was very nice and sweet, there wasn't enough chemistry for it to develop into anything substantial. But the whole experience was whimsically uplifting and wonderful in it's own right.