ON MISSED CONNECTIONS

The popular website "Craigslist" has a section for "missed connections." For example, if someone were on a train and had a nice conversation with a stranger (oblique Hitchcock reference!), but didn't get the stranger's name or contact info, they can post a message on this missed connection thing. The stranger could read it and reply discreetly, and they would connect.

I think I would love to be in a situation where that would actually work. I thought I had set up the PERFECT opportunity in Boston's Logan Airport last December...a cute-probably-in-her-mid-twenties girl was sitting two rows across from me in the gate area, on the phone. By what I overheard, she seemed like a well-spoken woman with a great sense of humor and a positive outlook on life. Her flight had been delayed most of the day and she was surprisingly upbeat about it. Plus, as mentioned, she was cute, which is important to a selfish jerk like me. And she was knitting a scarf, which for some reason struck me as awesome.

It took about an hour (my flight was delayed several hours, so I had plenty of time), but I eventually got up the courage to talk with her and tell her how much I admired her attitude. She thanked me, we (eventually) got on our respective flights and headed off to our respective destinations. For the next week or two, I checked Craigslist often to see if she would post anything about a missed connection, but...no dice.

Your question: why didn't I post a missed connection for her to respond to? My rationale, flimsy though it may be, is that I made an effort at a connection at the airport. Any subsequent attempts would be creepy, because if she were interested, she would have reconnected at the airport; as I said, we had several hours.

When thinking about this post, I came up with a few other missed connections. These are summarized below, in chronological order:

* The girl from my Level Two IO Class who told me about Fermat's Last Theorem - the book and the theorem itself (Summer 1999). She also did a great scene about mountain climbing. Total time spent in conversation: about ten minutes.

* The personal trainer that I flirted with when I joined Southlake Nautilus (Spring 2003). Total time spent in conversation: about thirty minutes.

* That one staff member from UT-Knoxville...you know, one of the 24 people who interviewed me. The cute one. Because I'm shallow. (Summer 2008) Total time spent in one-on-one conversation: seven seconds.

And, to balance it out, a connection I probably should have missed:

* SWACUHO Girl 1 - (Housing conferences, 2005 and 2006)

Background - We were talking in 2006 and she said she was dating someone. I asked her if she had been dating someone the during the 2005 conference. She said no, that she had been "single as a jaybird."

ME: Did you say "single as a jaybird?"
HER: I sure did.
ME: Is that even an expression?
HER: (smugly) Have you ever seen a jaybird wedding?
ME: I don't know. I've never been allowed inside a jaybird church.

That's comedy GOLD, suckas.

Later, at dinner:

ME: I am stuffed!
HER: (looks at me)
ME: I am full as a jaybird!
HER: (turns away)

Look, I'm often insecure and care deeply about what people think about me. But this time...no, I don't care at all. I know that both of my jaybird jokes were good (the first moreso than the second), and that all served to illustrated that I had been better off not connecting with SWACUHO Girl 1, as the image I had of her was much better than the reality.