Missed Connection.

One day Kalyn at work asked me if I ever really read the "Missed Connections" portion of Craigslist. I will continue with this story before telling you the prologue. My answer for her was "Not really, why?" And thus she turned me on to the poetic glory that is Missed Connections.

Reading better than any piece of modern literature I can think of to date, Missed Connections is the reality TV of reading. Interestingly enough, these people kind of have it right with short, to the point, honest requests.

"To the person in the purple skirt, thank you for your smile tonight." So many questions come up! Crocker Park? Borders? What brought him to Crocker Park? Christmas shopping for his wife and kids? And Borders Books specifically? Was it a coffee table book of Ansel Adams for his teenage daughter who has shown a recent interest in photography? This person, the one in the purple skirt, what did they look like? Why not the word "woman" or "girl"? Was it a transgender so he wasn't sure? Was he oddly attracted to this transgender? Their smile, why was that so important? Did it make him feel attractive again after 19 years of marriage to an Ice Queen that banishes sex to Tuesday nights for 12 minutes only, no blow jobs, and two lousy unappreciative teenagers that would rather spend their nights in front of a computer rather than with their family? Of course who would want to with all the yelling that goes on at the dinner table lately. Or was he depressed after having lost it all in the stock market crash and his AmEx platinum card had just been declined by a twenty year-old brat with hipster glasses and a pretentious smile? From two lines and a title, this story goes so many ways.

Then there's this one, another Bookstore Love Affair at Mac's Backs in Coventry (basically our tiny midwest version of Haight-Ashbury). It was a Saturday. She had a brimmed hat and overcoat, reading a graphic novel. He couldn't keep his eyes away from this beauty, not doubt smart and interesting for having picked such an unfeminine reading choice. He lurked in the stacks, waiting, watching her in his soggy brown wool trench coat and black driving cap. Outside the world was so cold and bitter in the Cleveland winter air, but in here, in this tiny bookstore, if only for a moment, she was his. If only he could talk, what would he say? She glanced up- like a deer in the meadow aware of the hunter. Something was out there amongst the shelves of dusty books. She waited a moment for the feeling to pass before returning to the colorful pictures below. She liked colors. They comforted her on these gray days when the stress of making sense of the symbols beside them hurt her imbecilic brain. He watched her laugh and flip through the pages. Who was this beautiful siren that could understand the dark, ironic humor of modern graphic fiction?

(Yes, I'm saying she's a slow person and he's an idiot.)

Of course, I am not mentioning the most important of all the missed connections ever listed on craigslist.com. Yes, it is true. I myself have posted amongst the despaired and hopeless romantics of cyberspace. To the guy with the Patrick Dempsey eyes, we met while we were both working in Mayfield...

Stop laughing. For one, it actually worked. And two, it was during a very long unemployed summer where the thoughts of the day were made up of "What cereal shall I eat today?" "Should I even bother to shower?" and the ever popular "Eh, these clothes don't smell that bad, what's another day?" So, a little excitement that was cheap and accessible was really just something to keep me from jumping off my roof. (Don't worry, said roof is like 15 feet off the ground.)