Bad hair day

What are the odds? I'm coming back through the lobby after a lunch meeting and I see this guy standing there with a couple of duffle bags at his feet. How many times do I go through this space, it's filled with bodies heading every which way, and never remark for a moment on any one of them. But something about this one hits a familiar note in my head.

"NAHH!" I think, still looking ahead. No, look again, there can only one be one head of hair like that on the face of the earth. Sure enough, stringy bleached out curls fall down over his ears making it look like his skull has been used as a temporary resting place for some rag previously used to wash a juice bar or a surf board. Oh yeah, it's J~. Yeesh.

An open elevator barfs out a short girl who comes over to meet him. They exchange a brief hug before she leads him out into the sunlight. She makes him carry his own duffle bags. Good girl.

I know that guy. I went on one date with him. One was quite enough. He's friendly enough and certainly smart enough. From my memory he's also cheap and just far enough down the "opinionated" road as to be "judgmental". A week after the date his hard drive crashed, taking with it his entire doctoral dissertation. He had a month and a half to rewrite his dissertation, no more time to talk to me, and had proven himself too hopelessly silly to be bothered with. Who in hell doesn't back up their dissertation? WHO? I never got a chance to tell him what that one date cost me.

For over a year I used to meet up with L~ for coffee. Once a week we'd get together before work and chat for an hour. I looked forward to seeing her. The morning after the cheap date L~ noticed I was a bit tired. I told her that I had been out the night before and after two sentences of describing my date she interrupted me.

"Is this J~?" She burst into tears. Then she proceeded to cut me out of her life with a series of unanswered phone calls and cold shoulders. Within a few weeks I noticed that any friends we had in common had stopped talking to me as well. I haven't been treated like this since 7th grade.

What are the odds, in a city as big as Chicago, that you could go on a date with someone who dumped one of your best friends 4 months earlier? I had no idea. I knew she was having a problematic dating experience but I never even knew his name. And today there he is, loping along with that stupid hair flopping from his head like a tattered flag in the breeze. I got mad. I got mad that someone so silly looking forced me from the fold of my friends. The anger wants to press it's way forward in fresh tears. It wants to, but I don't let it.

How many times have I twisted and turned myself in knots over something that wasn't working out in the way I hoped? I've done goofy things when anger over one situation came out sideways and spilled itself all over some innocent party who happened to stand too close. Each time, after some time, I looked back and realized that I wasn't rejected, passed over, not getting my phone calls returned, dumped or just plain not good enough. No, I was being spared!

I miss L~ . If she called me up today and wanted to go have coffee, I'd be overjoyed to meet up with her.