the meet cute

i recently had an opportunity to catch up with an online friend. he's been going through a rough patch and the chances to chat have been few and far between. as we were catching up, which didn't take long as not much had changed for either of us, i asked the question of whether he was still seeing the guy he had briefly mentioned meeting the last time we had chatted some months back. he was and so i decided to take the present opportunity to learn more about him.

after all the usual questions about how long they'd been dating, what he looked like, age, and what he did for a living, i asked the question about how they met. it turns out they met while my friend was looking for a birthday card. they literally collided in the store with my friend's new beau not having seen my friend in his rush to get to where he needed to get to. this resulted in their having coffee and then going to a movie that evening and then the rest, as they say, is history. i shared with my friend that many years back, his situation would have been called a "meet cute," which given that my friend is much younger, he found to be amusing. and with that, we parted to get on with our respective days.

as i was getting prepared for my day, i thought about my friend's encounter that led to if not love at least a new dating relationship. i was happy for him and this nice development that had occurred for him during this difficult time in his life. unfortunately, it didn't take long for this happy occurrence in his life to create a moment of sad reflection on my own.

"of course, something like this (the meet cute) would happen for him," i thought, "he's young and attractive." this led me to think about how quickly michael had also met someone and while young may not be a fitting characterization, he is attractive and certainly looks considerably younger than his age. for someone like me, who is neither young or particularly attractive, i couldn't help but reflect on how my friend's birthday card search encounter would have transpired for me. i imagined that the collision would have resulted in a hurried apology and check to see if i was ok at best and nothing more. "meet cutes," i surmised, were not the types of occurrences that happened for me.

that realization left an aching pain in my heart and made for a very sad start to my day.