I want to be a Craigslist missed connection.
When I was growing up, I wanted to be an astronaut, Louis Pasteur (don’t ask) and a race car driver. None of those things happened, but I can still fulfill my dream to be a missed connection. Because, really, who doesn’t want to be one?
If you aren’t familiar, missed connections come in two types.
The first is the cry to the heavens.
They’re all basically the same: “To Jim/L/My Snookie, some day/week/fortnight I hope/know/dread that you’ll see it was a mistake/joy/reality-show script that we were married/apart/cell mates. I’ll never forget/understand/unchain you. Love/miss/screw/ you, Amanda/S/Your Malignant Lump of Love.”
They’re pathetic, and if you can’t see yourself in them you’ve never loved. But the second type of missed connection is my goal.
It’s for people who were too cowardly or lazy to make their move. They usually mention eye contact and finish with, “Wish I’d said something.”
I like reading them and want to be one. Maybe I’d read, “To the guy who has clearly never cleaned his laptop,” or “To that man who eats pasta like he’s five.”
I find them quite romantic, which is to say, they have no bearing on reality.
Missed connections deny a couple of harsh truths: First, the majority of single guys I know make attempted eye contact with every girl who meets their criteria, namely being a biped and consuming oxygen.
The only reason it ever works is that so many women are oblivious to men’s advances. I’ve had conservations like this a dozen times.
Me: That guy was totally smitten with you.
Woman: Really?
Me: He was staring at you and he kept touching your arm.
Woman: Did he?
Me: He licked your face.
Woman: Is it muggy today?
Second, it ignores the fact that most of these highly charged moments of connection would be ruined if the two people involved actually talked. About half the women I find attractive can ruin it instantly with a single mention of Twilight.
What missed connections really do is provide you with one more opportunity to extend the eye contact and the ego boost. But real life would ruin it.
But that’s good enough, I say. It’s the NSA of infatuation.
I want to be a missed connection. It just doesn’t follow that I want to be found.
