Missed Connections

This week my girlfriend got an email from her coworker that simply read, "I think you have a secret admirer” and included a link to Craigslist.

Yep, Craigslist.... as in Missed Connections.

For those who don’t know, Missed Connections is a place where people go to post things like, “I saw you at Subway. You ordered a six inch cold cut combo and you smiled at me. Call me sometime.”

I knew that the site existed only because the above mentioned quote was actually a line of dialogue from a play I did this summer. I never actually expected to know anyone who had been on it.

Until now.

So, my girlfriend, clicks the link and sure enough there it was.

“You stopped in today to grab a coffee on your way in to work. I asked you about your car and how it was damaged, loved your response. I would like it even more if you came in again so that I could ask you out.”

“My first thought was that somehow we got hacked at work,” she later emailed me, “but our IT guys are Nazis about hackers so I went ahead and followed the link. I was totally baffled for about 30 seconds... then it clicked.”

She had stopped into an organic coffee shop on the way to work and chatted with the guy making her latte. He asked about the missing piece of her bumper, and she informed him that a raccoon committed suicide with her car.

They made pleasant, commonplace chit-chat about work and whatnot and she didn’t think a thing of it. But then she got to work and found that email from a coworker who gets Google alerts anytime her company’s name is mentioned online.

He had referenced it in the subject heading.

“I didn't know that Missed Connections existed, on Craigslist or elsewhere!” she said. “Nothing is private on the Internet!”

She sent me the link with a note, “I thought of you and your blog because, seriously, there's nothing normal about dating anymore! Not that I'm dating but, if I were single, what should I make of that?”

And then she added, “Of course, now the wheels are turning.” She was referring to one of our single gal pals on a quest for a man. “Hey, he's cute, he's obviously single, and he's a business owner. Can't hurt to think about it, right?”

And thus the way the female mind works. There are always opportunities for men – as long as they are just this side of crazy.