Random Encounters

This morning when I stopped at the gas station to get some water on my walk, there was what looked to be a hot young mother getting out of an SUV, though I couldn’t say for certain, as I was unable to see her face. What I could see, though, looked very nice indeed.
Once inside and paying for my water I got a good look at her and she was, in fact, extremely cute.
Further, I noticed that her ring finger was completely unadorned, though she was driving an SUV and was there with a kid, so it could be that she was in a relationship that was exclusive but not legally binding.
Or her ring could be at the jewelers being resized, or any other number of possibilities that would ultimately make her utterly inaccessible to me.
She did appear to be a bit young to have a kid the age of the boy with her, so maybe she was just the hired help for some wealthy family. Or maybe she just got knocked up the very second she got in whatever relationship she may or may not have been in. Maybe her husband gave her a kid in lieu of a ring.
Whatever the case, despite how cute she was, all considerations were pretty much irrelevant given that circumstances were hardly conducive to me trying to start up a conversation with her as I stood there sweaty and unwashed with earphones jammed in my ears while she was busy attending to the kid that was either hers, her employer’s, or some random kid she’d grabbed from alongside the road on her way to the gas station.
Some of you may dispute that, claiming that, no matter what the circumstances, I need to take every shot I can. Perhaps, but I honestly don’t see an attractive woman in a gas station at 9:30 in the morning with a kid (who may or may not be hers) responding very well to some random, sweaty, unwashed guy coming up to her and laying on what he laughingly refers to as “charm.”
Sure, there’s an outside chance (similar to the chances of lead spontaneously turning into gold) that she would admire my “moxie” or something, but more than likely she would be irritated and find the whole thing desperate and pathetic.
The “shoot at everything that moves” approach may have some merit, but I’ve never actually seen it pay off in any significant way for anyone.
In fact, I once saw this documentary in which a filmmaker stood on a street corner in NYC and just asked out every woman that walked past. He literally asked out hundreds of women, virtually all of whom (some more politely than others) turned him down.
“Aha!” you might be heard to exclaim, as you focus on that “virtually.” Clearly at least one person said yes, right? And there’s a chance that the one person might be “the one,” which would, presumably, make the hours of humiliating rejection he’d spent on that corner all worthwhile.
If that is what you’re thinking, it needs to be mentioned that the cameraman filming the whole thing conducted “exit polls” of some of the ladies as they walked past, asking them why they said yes or no. The women (I believe there were two) who’d said yes had done so just for the sheer hell of it and explicitly stated that, while they did find the whole thing sort of charming, they couldn’t really see themselves going on a romantic date with the poor schlub and had no intention of seriously pursuing a romance with him. They just thought he was kind of a charming dork, not boyfriend material.
Basically the chicks who said yes did so either as sort of a joke, or because they could see themselves being platonic friends with him.
That makes the effort he put forth still seem humiliating and pointless. Oh sure, everyone can use more friends, I suppose, but the guy wasn’t really looking for new friends, was he? Maybe in the long run being friends with these ladies, though honestly I don’t believe even that was too likely to happen, could pay off (maybe they have desperate, single friends), but it did nothing to solve his more immediate problem.
So I don’t really see the “shotgun” method as being a viable approach for anyone, and I especially don’t see it working for me.
That raises the question, then, of what other options there are.
Basically, as I see it, there are three routes to romance: The Organic, The Synthetic, and The Random Encounter.
The Organic method is when romance occurs naturally as a part of your everyday life. You make a connection with a co-worker, or a fellow student, or an existing friendship takes a turn away from the platonic. The Organic occurs gradually over time, like a plant growing and finally blossoming.
The Synthetic method involves using artificial means from outside your normal routine, such as dating services, personal ads, or dating shows. While it can take time for this method to pay off, it’s an artificial process, like synthesizing long-chain polymers to create something similar to a substance that would occur in nature, or to create something entirely new.
The Random Encounter is the whole “finding it when you’re not looking for it” method. It relies entirely on chance. For example, you might find yourself connecting with the person sitting next to you on a plane, or waiting in line to use a porta-potty, or whatever. It’s outside of your normal routine, but it’s not premeditated or expected. It’s just random.
There’s considerable crossover among the three. For example, being set up on a blind date with someone by a mutual friend can be both Organic and Synthetic, and a Random Encounter can happen in your every day life. There are countless permutations of human interaction that take on many aspects of the three methods, in countless different ways.
However, given that I work with three men and a married grandmother, the people I socialize with have no single friends they could set me up with, and I’m too cheap to pay for any sort of dating service, that pretty much leaves only the third option available to me.
Of course, the problem with the Random Encounter is exactly that: it’s random. It can’t be predicted or counted on.
You can’t walk out the door thinking “Today I’m going to have a random encounter” and expect to actually have one.
The other problem for me is that I’m rarely in situations that are conducive to Random Encounters, and even when I am, they just don’t happen.
For example, on Monday I was in DC, surrounded by half a million people. How many Random Encounters did I have? Well, despite the speculation that arose when I was spending most of my evening standing in line to use a porta-potty, the answer is, predictably, zero.
(Random Encounters, despite what I said earlier, tend to be predictable when it comes to me. Basically, you just know that they’re not going to happen.)
On the subject of my speculative hook-up in DC, though, I have to ask this of my friends: do you honestly think that if I were hooking up with someone I wouldn’t call you and let you know? Hell, I’d probably issue a press release, or an Amber Alert or something. Honestly, at this point I think Homeland Security actually does have a “Jon is getting lucky” alert that would be broadcast on the Emergency Broadcast System along with instructions on how to deal with this extraordinarily unusual circumstance and a listing of the appropriate evacuation routes. I believe it's known as a “We Don’t Have A Color For This” Alert...
My A/C has been fixed at last. The maintenance guy came in, said, “It will definitely get fixed today,” then went to work, saying that they now knew what the problem was (though he didn’t elucidate on that point other than to say that he’d known all along that it would be “something stupid”), and a few minutes later he was gone, taking the window unit with him, and my central air was blowing coolness through the various vents located throughout the apartment.
As I’ve mentioned before, I seldom actually use my A/C, as it doesn’t really work that well, and I like the fact that most of the time my electric bill is fairly low, which using my A/C would disrupt.
But, since it was so much trouble to get it working again, I figure I’ll try it out for a little while.
I had been making a lot of use of the window unit, as that worked wonders for cooling down my bedroom, though for reasons that I wouldn’t be likely to be able to articulate, its operation seemed to cause me some amount of anxiety while I was sleeping.
At least I’m assuming it was the source of the anxiety, as the anxiety appeared when the window unit did, and my gut-reaction to the odd, anxious feelings was to attribute them to the window unit.
Why? I really have no idea, nor can I really define the anxiety. Essentially I just found myself having dreams that seemed to be filled with anxiety of some kind, though, again, I can’t really define it. While the dreams themselves tended to be odd, they weren’t especially unusual or disturbing. No nightmarish imagery or anything like that, just more or less standard fare…with the exception that in the dreams I seemed to be caught in the throes of some kind of vague anxiety that had no discernible source.
In any case, here’s hoping that tonight’s dreams, sans window A/C unit, will be free of any anxiety...
Whenever I refer to my job, and, indeed, even to the company I work for, I tend to be pretty vague.
That’s a deliberate choice, as there are sort of nebulous rules defining just how open we can be about our work lives. For example, it’s pretty much public knowledge around these parts that the facility I work at belongs to my employer, but in any sort of public information about the operations of the facility it is referred to as an “undisclosed location.”
Of course, most Threshold readers know what company I work for, particularly since many of them actually work there with me.
In any case, over the weekend another department had a big event that required staffing beyond what the department has available, and so they turned to other departments for volunteers.
Many people from the weekday shifts in my department volunteered in order to receive some overtime, but lots of other people, including salaried employees, turned up for it as well.
On Saturday morning before work I had an encounter with one of those volunteers when I went out to the parking lot to throw my gym bag in my car and grab my lunch bag. She asked me to show her how to get to where she needed to be.
Actually, she asked me to show her to where I work, but I knew that she meant the newly-constructed area that’s pretty much adjacent to where I work, and which has a similar name to where I work (the acronym is off by one letter).
In any case, she wasn’t especially cute, but she was fairly attractive.
As it was really early in the morning I wasn’t exactly at my sharpest, so I failed to do a ring check, and I doubt that I mustered up much in the way of what I laughingly refer to as charm (same stuff I failed to unleash on the cute chick at the gas station this morning).
As we neared her destination, she said something like, “Hey, you’ve got the black chucks. Good job! Mine are gray.” She admitted that last part as if she were greatly ashamed of her lameness.
Like I said, it was really early in the morning, so, having no idea what she was talking about, I responded with a pithy “Ah,” while I performed a mental inventory and tried to determine what I had on or about my person that was black.
Once upon a time it would have been extremely difficult to do this, as I tended to dress all in black (I’m slightly more colorful these days). On this particular day, though, the only black thing I was wearing was a T-shirt, which didn’t seem to be a likely candidate for chuck-hood.
By the time I realized that my Converse All Stars are also black, and are specifically known as “Chuck Taylor Classic All Stars,” and that, in fact, she had been wearing Converse All Stars as well, it was several minutes after we’d parted company.
That’s the other problem with Random Encounters for me: when they do occur, they usually do so when I’m at my dumbest or otherwise unable to respond to them properly…
The past few days went by pretty quickly. It seemed as though once Tuesday arrived my weekend was over. Beyond some cooking, I really didn’t accomplish much this week.
Next week I’ll be in an XML class at headquarters on Wednesday and Thursday.
Monday I finally have a dentist appointment, so I’ll be finding out how much my new teeth are going to cost me.
Tuesday, just because he asked, not because I actually want to see it, I’ll be going to “Fantastic Four” with Scott.
So it’ll be a pretty full week, no doubt filled with all sorts of Random Encounters…which I’ll totally screw up.
In any case, I hope you all have a good weekend, and I’ll met you back here next week.