Missed Connections

An odd thing happened on my way to work. I was running a little late, mostly because I dread coming here so much and I wanted to stay with Casey. But alas, I had to leave. As I sat on the train I noticed a guy that looked somewhat familiar so I scanned my brain trying to figure out how I would know him. School? No. Some show? No. Then it came to me.... I met him here. The guy I was trying not to stare at was someone I met on this very train and spoke to for all of one minute in 2004! You might be wondering how I could possibly remember that. Well, the story gets weirder. When we briefly met in 2004 we only spoke because we got in the same train car and he hit his head on the roof. I laughed at him openly because I am rude. Then he spoke to himself for a awhile. That was about it. Insanely tall and crazy is easy to remember and tends to catch ones attention. I found the event funny and kept it in mind for later.

Moving on to later. In 2004 I spent way too much time on Craigslist. Through that site I found two of my apartments and so many jobs I can't even count. I didn't have blogging and Myspace to eat up all my time. I used to make fake dating profiles to read the funny responses. I found endless amusement. At some point I wrote my first Missed Connection. I think I was trying to be amusing and used the situation on the train with the tall guy that hit his head. To my complete shock, he saw it! The guy is a comedian and he was going through Craigslist looking for material and found my post. I never, ever thought in a million that if I wrote something the person would find it.

So this guy responds with more details of the incident. We both had a laugh at finding each other. He gave me a link to his website and mentioned he was doing something on Comedy Central. I think I might have sent him a clip of it or something. I'm not sure. I don't remember. Anyway, I should mention that this was simply an amusing situation that happened. We never spoke of actually meeting. There was not any interest in knowing each other and I assumed I would never see or hear of this person again. He would forever remain the missed connection that caught me acting like an ass on Craigslist.

Then a year or two later I got a strange e-mail. Some girl was writing to ask what my relationship was with a name that I didn't recognize. She had found my e-mail address in her boyfriend's mail and wanted to know who I was. After doing a mail search I finally figured it out and assured her I didn't really know him. He wasn't trying to pick people up. Not to worry. She wrote back something very sad about being in some bad relationships and having trust issues. I felt bad for her because we have all known some jaded girl at some point in time who just can't trust in a good thing. Then after thinking about it I started feeling bad for the guy because his girlfriend is paranoid and going through his mail. For the record, that is never okay. Boundaries are a very important part of relationships. I digress.

That was my last run in with the missed connection guy. Until today. When it finally dawned on me who he was after several stops I thought, should I go up and ask him? That seemed very creepy and pointless. Plus, I don't want anybody to think I'm hitting on them. Instead I told the odd story to a co-worker and sang "It's a small world." in my head for an hour. Then unable to let it go I decided to blog. That means I have to research. So I looked the guy up on myspace and found that in his top friends he links another NY comedian that I watched perform in Damn Yankees last weekend and recently performed in a Parodivas show! The Parodivas are my real friends. Feel free to blog stalk Jason and Darla.

So the moral of the story is, don't post stupid shit on Craigslist because it will haunt you for life. Or maybe the moral is, don't cross me because I will find you! Most likely the moral is, this planet of ours is much smaller than we realize.