Yes I look at Craig’s List Missed Connections section. Often.

I’m a city girl in my heart and soul. I’ve dreamed of bustling among bright lights and tall buildings since I was yea high. Instead my reality is that I’m currently bustling among flickering lights and Home Depot shopping centers. As a result of deciding it would be a great idea to buy at the height of the real estate market, I now consider myself stuck in a metropolis who’s idea of progressive is deep fried Snickers bars at the local fair and adding a Super Walmart down the road.

To find a conglomerate of more sophisticated, intelligent, and culture-savvy men, I must travel 35 miles from where I call home. “Putting myself out there” literally means pumping overpriced gasoline in my vehicle for the 45 minute trek to a breath of fresh smog-filled air. On one rare sunny Seattle day I decided to make that trek and chose Starbucks as my stomping ground to carefully eye out the selections of these available men.

I had everything I needed. A full charge on my Blackberry, my Compaq Presario laptop I got on sale at Sears, and extra lip gloss just in case a magnetic attraction was in the cards. Even though I spent the majority of my time changing to a better seat as people got up, I still came head-to-head with the fierce fact that magnetic attractions only forcefully exist on Reality Television Shows. All I got out of my hours at Starbucks was a $15 parking garage ticket, my first real encounter of tourettes, and standing hairs on the back of my neck caused from the constant stare of the girl next to me.

Starbucks scenario was nothing short of a bust. Not wanting to lose any precious time, I went straight to Scenario 2: Seek out a wing man and attack other points of public interest. Genius came upon me and I knew there was no better interest than a small local pizza place smack-dab in the troubled artists’ heart of the city. I chose well. This place was so small you couldn’t help but be knee-to-knee with your pizza consuming neighbor, creating a very cozy familial atmosphere. Perfect opportunity to make them feel even more uncomfortable with forced awkward and menial conversations.

Just when I was starting to observe the drab demographic wondering if I would’ve had better luck by striking up a shouting conversation with Tourettes Guy, a disheveled man sat directly in front of me. I was immediately so impressed with his excellent pizza slice selection that I just had to comment on it. When he opened his mouth and an Australian accent came out, his shaggy unwashed hair and crooked teeth suddenly became very attractive. Not only did he have a foreign accent, but I discovered he had been to more countries than I had, and he was reading a local film festival paper. My interest went from curious to captivated. Until the worst possible thing happened. My wing man got bored and wanted to bail, taking both me and my dreams out the door.

The only thing I got out of Scenario 2 was delicious pesto pizza and a more than normal amount of furrowed brows in my direction because I was “that girl” who spoke out of line. Who could’ve known that pizza protocol calls for avoiding eye contact with anything but your own slice and eating quickly to make room for the next pizza patron? Well I say to them, there is no room for social pizza pie etiquette when it comes to blue-eyed-accent-guys. Sorry.

Since scenarios 1 and 2 were disappointing and uneventful, I did what any normal city girl would do. I forced my fuel gage to “E” by making the long drive home to my small town townhouse filled with roommates and cats. After my quick routine of making sure nothing is in the closet or under the bed, I excitedly realized my laptop had a little bit of a charge left.

Scenario 3: Feverishly checking Craig’s List Missed Connections to see if Tourettes Guy or Pizza Accent Man were calling out to me over the web. After scanning for ads written in ALL CAPS or in Australian – I came to the conclusion that all three scenarios failed me.

Three lessons learned in three scenarios:

1. Find free parking and wear shoes in accordance to walking a few extra blocks. No one can pull off a limp as a swagger, I don’t care how much you try.
2. Don’t order Pesto Pizza. Turns out the furrowed brows were from the clusters of green sandwiched between my first and second bicuspids, not the knee-rubbing-knee-while-winking combination.
3. Your Craig’s List ad in Missed Connections reaching out to Tourettes Guy and Pizza Accent Man cannot be deleted the next day when you realize it was a bad idea.

Enough of this “putting yourself out there” effort. Next time I’m going to double my chances of meeting colorful men on the way up to the city and save gas doing it. I’m taking the bus.

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