Being single on valentines day this year, I’ve got to wonder are any of these for me….in a social or business situation did I ignore the signs and signals someone else was sending me? Did I miss out, was I so oblivious or acted completely uninterested, and are they trying again to get my attention in this harmless forum?
Cori Poletto, in an email to Open Source on 2/14/06
(Almost) met her on a Sunday and my heart stood still [reduktiv/Flickr]
It’s the age-old story of lives too soon parted. We met at that party, spoke of Nietzsche, you vanished; I gaped at you on the train before you were swept off into the cruel and shifting crowds of Copley Square; I held your legs down when you were having a seizure, but the paramedics rushed you out of my life. The Missed Connections pages are the refuge and the remedy for those of us whose Monday-morning quarterbacking outperforms our seize-the-moment spontaneity.
It’s Carpe Yesterday.
People read these daily, follow threads closer than they follow the news. What’s the obsession about? Is it just an innocuous way to spread a little sunshine? When so many posts seem like a complete shot in the dark, do these ever actually work for anyone?
And why can’t we just start approaching people when we like the looks of them?
We asked as much on Missed Connections pages from Boston to San Francisco and the emails rolled in.
There’s something about missed connections that keeps me coming back to read more over and over again. I’m not working in an office where I can follow juicy gossip or others heartache or success stories. It’s a curiosity I have for other’s social mishaps or successes, living vicariously through them…it’s like the choose your own adventure books I used to read when I was little. Following related posts are like reading a nancy drew mystery. I will always be a fan.
Cori Poletto, in an email to Open Source on 2/14/06
I’ve recently become completely hooked on MC. It’s sort of like eavesdropping on the unconscious half-thoughts, murmurings, and anxieties (as well as conscious desires and dysfunctions) of several hundred people, all at once, without leaving the house. I think of MC readers as the 21st century equivalent of Baudelaire’s flanneur, but we don’t have to go to downtown. It’s fabulous.
Anonymous eavesdropping seems to be kind of a thing right now; missed connections reminds me of Found magazine, except craigslist is more in the realist genre whereas Found is kind of like a self-help manual — a little too sunny and upbeat about our neighbors and how much we either have in common or are better off, psychologically, aesthetically, and/or intellectually, than they are.
Rekha, in an email to Open Source on 2/15/06
I have a good one for you. I met a girl I was really into and on our first date, after she pretty much told me she didn’t want a relationship, we talked about missed connections and she told me that she’d always wished somebody had written one for her… The next day, elated over the date, full of feeling, and a little sad that she thought she didn’t want to see me anymore, I wrote her a fake one, sort of from the perspective of someone else, ostensibly in the restaurant, observing us having a good time, but also from me. anyway, she liked my post and decided to date me…When I proposed, in Vegas, I did it in the form of another missed connections post, from the same guy’s POV. This time “he’d” been following “me” around when “we” were ring shopping. We’re getting married in october.
Charles Blackstone, in an email to Open Source on 2/10/06
I often read the Missed Connections, and some of the posters there display a level of detailed attraction that makes me say, “Why didn’t you just say something at the time, you spineless amoeba!”
But you–you said something to the chick on the Red Line this morning. You and she stood at opposite doors, facing each other… You had a slight smile on your face, and seemed like a nice enough guy. As the train began to slow down as it pulled into the station, she began to jockey for position to get off the train. There was this perfect moment when the both of you were facing each other; you smiled at her and cheerfully said, “I like your belt.”
She said something, probably, “What?” or “Excuse me?” because you repeated, “I like your belt.” She said thank you and smiled a bit, but also looked wary. She moved to exit the train, and you let her and the other passengers by with the grace of a head waiter showing customers to their seats. You continued to smile with a bit of an “Oh well” look, but you didn’t look defeated at all, not by a longshot.
I salute you, “I like your belt” guy.
anon-94319146, “I Like Your Belt??? Guy, You Rock. craigslist: chicago
“Missed Connections” — a double meaning for Chris and Mary?
I join in the salute of the “I like your belt guy.â€? I was at CVS a couple of weeks ago standing in line thinking about how many “pop rocksâ€? I could put in my mouth at one time, when this beautiful girl stands in the line next to me. I’m frozen, for the first time ever I’m praying that everyone in front of me is using a credit card. Ok Garrett think, what am I going to say. Oh man, she has a roughness to her – a rough dignity, like she doesn’t take any crap, a confidence that says oh yea I glanced through the NY Times today, but I had to get back to my Henry Miller book before the Nine Inch Nails show tonight. Oh but that hard shell covers a subtle glamour that simmers – until that dinner party, when she reluctantly wears that form-fitting backless dress, and the men in the room come to attention like the Captain has just entered our barracks. Wait, there is a third line open over there and she is not taking her batteries and bread to the open line, she is staying in the line next to me, she is glancing at me. Think, think, think, um um um, she is looking at me, um um um. She is walking to the register. She is walking away. Do I run after her? Will she scream for the cops? She is gone.
The rest of my day was ruined. I was filled with exstistential dread. That could have been the love of my life. We had obviously connected on a physical level and that’s half the battle isn’t? Isn’t? Why didn’t I just compliment her on those fluffy winter boots? Why didn’t I just say anything, even if it went nowhere, I could at least go down swinging?
So I salute you “I like your belt guy,� you went down swinging.
oh nother, you have tortured yourself. swing, brother, swing….
My prominent missed connections have not been with strangers, but with friends. I have missed the overtures and lived to regret that. Both missed connections went on to marry other women quite soon. One I maintained a friendship with and we simply remain silent about our mutual regret.
Story the first: I returned the town where I went to HS in my early twenties, because I got some programming work there. I became a part of a social group that included the older brother of one my HS friends. We became somewhat close friends. Now, in HS, I had a group of friends that were predominantly male. I had difficulty connecting to other girls at that age. (Didn’t understand the need to go to the bathroom together thing.) All my male friends seemed to have dated each of the girls in our social circle, except me. Over the course of 3 years, I saw them matched up in different pairs. They would kiss in the back seat of my car. Hold hands everywhere we went. And I was always single. Or dating someone from outside the group. I left HS convinced that I was wholly unattractive.
Forward to my early 20s. I’m still sure that I’m only friend material. So when my friend invites me to an Etta Jones concert, I am thrown when he comments that I sat with my arms crossed and we couldn’t hold hands. I had never received any indication of that kind of interest. We continued to hang out and I then had my inner wonderings, and realized that I was attracted to him, but the subject never came up again. Then I got a job that sent me to London for 8 months. He threw a big surprise going away party for me. It was very thoughtful and I was truly surprised. I still didn’t get the ‘signal’, though.
While I was in London he wrote me once. I’m not much of a consistent letter writer. (Now with email I’m much better.) I’m not sure if I wrote back. But the following spring when I returned to the US, I got a call from him. He asked if I could come over one evening and talk to him. I hadn’t seen my family in 8 months and felt that I needed to spend time with them and asked for a rain date. He was going on a trip to Europe the next day, so it would have to wait.
He returned from Europe with a girlfriend, who is now his wife.
I later learned that he wanted to talk because he had missed me and he was tired of being single (he had focused on his career for a decade without really dating) and he was ready to marry. When I didn’t respond and it was clear that I would be travelling for long intervals with my work, he decided to focus his desires elsewhere. I regretted not having that conversation for years. How did I miss that connection? We were such good friends and I think we would have had a wonderful relationship.
Story the second:
I met a man in a professional capacity. Through our work together we were getting to know one another. One day he suggested that we have our next meeting over lunch. We did, but I didn’t get that he was fishing for my interest level. It was a semi-date. I liked him, but I was concerned that I would be overstepping professional bounds to indicate that. So, we had our lunch and that was that. We continued our work and our friendship has grown profoundly. I trust him more than anyone in the world. But he did intuit my interest and it wasn’t until years later that he told me of his unspoken motivation for that lunch. Six months later, he met someone else and they are married. I stopped asking years ago how their relationship is because the answer is never full of joy and always full of longing. Our frienship is full of mutual longing. Longing that will go unspoken for the sake of honor and maintenance of our friendship for the rest of our lives.
I have repeatedly missed these connections with people I know and admire and have an interest in. I am convinced now that I will be an old woman who is in love with several people. They will be in my life and I will have a certain joy and satisfaction from those friendships, but my deep pangs of closeness will never be satiated.
Ok, that’s a bit fatalistic. I’m open to the possibility that I will find a very satisfying, long-term relationship. Of course, I have to stop missing those connection opportunities…..
I only have a minute and I’m looking forward to getting home tonight so I can read Allison’s post above and post on the obsession thread. I just wanted to say, remember the movie “City Slickers”, when they ask Jack Palance if he’s ever been in love. He recounts the story where he rode up to a farm years ago and exchanged a long look with beautiful women behind the fence. He rode away and has no regrets; he said he will always have that love.
Missed connections can be beautiful because there is no disappointment. Missed connections can remind us of the beauty of the moment. Cherish that moment, it can’t be taken away.
I wrote a missed connection for a european craigslist and the responses I got were all from Russian or Ukrainian mail-order brides who would write long emails about how my post inspired them and how much they would like to meet me.
I become quite disillusioned.. though the photos they sent were impressive.
I’ve been working on a series of poems inspired by the texts of missed connections ads. Three of them are available here.
James Blunt’s beautiful new song “beautiful” is all about a missed connection.
Bookgirl, the poems are beautiful. “Crush,” what a great word, what does it really mean?
Allison, I hope you don’t mind me commenting a little on your post. I will this time and if you do mind, let me know and I will refrain next time. My humble opinion is forget about the first guy, if he’s in such a rush to “settle”, he has issues, simple as that. Saying I’m tired of being single, I think I’ll get married, has hints of arrogance and insecurity (qualities that are far from you) The second guy – did you ever think that maybe the tension of “longingâ€? between both of you may be what keeps the friendship burning. You know he will never betray his wife and that is why you “trust him more than anyone in the world.” If he had never married her, you may not have had this continued evidence of his honor and things may have turned out much different. This is precisely why I’m wary of this romantic “missed connection” talk; it enables our impulse for regret. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, Allison and the rest, please avoid regret like the plague. The moments of our life are finite; a mathematician could add them up. Every moment consumed by regret is a subtraction from our allotted precious moments. We are nothing more then our experiences up until this point, Feb. 16. If you had settled for that settler you would not be the same eloquent Allison you are now. From the point of time that you didn’t settle for that settler, up until now, I’m sure you’ve experienced some things that you would not trade for the world. When you do find that love, they will be in love with an Allison who has much more to offer because of those subsequent experiences, even the “missedâ€? ones.
There is eloquence to Allison’s writing that is piercing. I’ve found that a lot of the writing on the internet feels like it’s trying to live up to certains ideas about the internet. The writing can be too clever, disconnected, fast – people are writing at you, not necessarily too you. Allisons writing has ink dripping from it, I’m clutching the letter from her to “meâ€? in my hand, we all feel like it is “me” she is talking to. I hope we can all strive to write like this, see how far it can take us. It’s hard, it requires vulnerability, humility, and a basic curiosity. We may have nothing to prove but our writing can sometimes turn into comment “toppers.â€? Instead of topping the last comment it is so much more fulfilling and fruitful to take something from it – build a new idea in our head. I’m talking to myself here as much as anyone.
Thanks, nother.
Good point about that “Beautiful” song; it’s Missed Connections all over!