How long has it been since that fall evening on the bus? I think I was still a teenager, right? I'm not sure why I'm asking you for confirmation of my age since we never actually talked and I didn't even catch your name, but if I know almost nothing about you, why is it not a month has gone by that I don't think of you and daydream about our tragic romance that never happened?
Is it better that we never spoke? I might have realized you laughed like Fran Drescher or loved Vin Diesel. Or you may have belonged to that disappointing demographic of girls who lose interest in me after ten minutes of conversation. One of the worst feelings in the world is crossing the room to talk to a girl who's been smiling at me all night and after a few minutes her smile fades, she shrugs, and says she should find her friends. At what point did I lose her interest? It's always frustrated me that a higher percentage of girls don't fall in love with me. I know 80 to 90 percent of all girls may be asking too much, but I would settle for 67 percent.
The rest of the conversation was extremely cathartic as we spent an hour listing all the things we didn't like about each other, but in a surprisingly constructive way that provided the best feedback I'd ever had on relationships from the female point of view.
I know it's unlikely you're still thinking of me all these years later, but I hope you remembered me for at least a few days or a week or a few months, keeping an eye out whenever you rode the same bus line, wondering if you might bump into me again.
Do you remember that chilly fall day in Germany? I was sitting in the back row of a crowded bus. You entered through the middle doors while I looked out the window, but I felt the pull of your eyes. I turned my head and locked eyes with you, the most stunningly beautiful girl. The fading early evening light flickered through the windows as we passed under a series of bridges, alternately illuminating your long dark hair and golden eyes then plunging you into darkness.
Usually when you check someone out, rules of decorum suggest you look away after a few seconds, but neither of us turned our heads for the first thirty. All social rules escaped me because I had been hit with a lightning bolt, my face became flushed, my heart beat faster. You looked down for a brief moment, then looked back up and gave a shy smile, and I was completely smitten.
My thoughts began to race. How should I approach? There was no smooth way to navigate the thirty people standing between us and there was a good chance the movements of the bus would send me tumbling to the ground while approaching. You were obviously interested in me while I was sitting, but would you still be interested in a stumbling, off balance, falling down version of me? The other passengers stared ahead, swaying in unison with the jerky movements of the bus, oblivious to our romantic intrigue.
We continued to make eye contact and exchange smiles for the next six minutes as I tried to muster the courage to get up out of my seat. Eventually the bus slowed to a halt. Your door opened, you took a step forward, paused to look back at me over your shoulder, smiled one last time, then exited.
I watched you grow smaller out the back window until you disappeared entirely.
For years, my failure to talk to you pained me, but now I'm grateful to have that perfect memory forever unsullied by the harsh realities of romance.
Your family would have hated me. Maybe your father owned a Doner Kebab shop and you would take me home to meet your parents and he would offer me a kebab and I would have to decline because I'm a vegetarian, and he would forbid you from marrying me.
And what language would we speak at home? We both spoke German, but we would eventually grow tired of never being understood in our native languages. We wouldn't laugh at the same jokes or like the same movies. Our cultural differences would seem exciting for the first two years, exhausting after five, and isolating after ten.
The relationship probably would have ended badly. Don't all romances end badly? Otherwise they wouldn't end.
This is why I appreciate a romance that never started.
I married a Turk. I'll ask him if he knows her.
She had dark hair and was about 5'7″; I hope that helps him find her.
mmmmm "Doner Kebab" One of the few things that helped me survive the cuisine of Spain.
I always worried her dad would expect me to join the family business; I wouldn't want him to think I was too good to work in the doner kebab business, but it just wasn't my thing.
ahhhhh life's fantasies ……where would we be without them? I think creative people need to live in their head a bit sometimes just to survive! Makes things a little more exciting when the mundane of the day to day sets in.
She probably thinks about you from time to time as well…she probably has a blog too….you should Google the words "Cute guy I saw on a bus a long time ago" to see if she has ever blogged about "you"…..
You can thank me later…….
I'll have to search for her on Google, although I would guess she doesn't speak any English and would be writing her blog in German.
I have fallen in love with a few like this "from across a crowded room" as the song goes.. And as I convinced myself to seize the moment and go for it I'd usually collapse like Dr. Zhivago when he saw Lara at the train station. My best line with someone I knew was "___________, I've been meaning to ask you out for the longest time. Waddya say we get a room on Miami Beach for the weekend and just party, party…" Usually worked. Actually it was not a line because I really did want to see if there might be possibilities for something lasting.But now time has gone on and I have been a bachelor 27 years and my hair is white. Miami Beach is still there, however.
I think of the handful of times I've tried to muster the courage to cross the room and offer a smooth line, and I'm sure it would have worked at least once.
This sounds a whole lot like how I would respond to running into that West Side Ice Cream Man I was smitten with in 6th grade. I didn't really like boys yet, and he had a suspicious beard and criminal record. I think I just really loved ice cream.
Maybe what you've been looking for all this time is somebody to bring you ice cream.
I feel the same way from the devastatingly attractive man I saw in the metro about 9 years ago…I almost feel like I should have hopped on his train instead of mine, but then I would have gotten home really late that day.
You should have at least followed him to his house so you could arrange to accidentally bump into him another day.
I was 10 years old, and we were on vacation, and, for a few minutes, we drove beside a Jeep. This was in the '70s. The Jeep's top was down and the doors were off, and the woman driving it (I'm guessing she was about 20) was wearing white denim shorts and a white denim jacket, and she had long dirty blonde hair. We never made eye contact, but I fell completely in love with her.
I've had a few of those drive-by romances as well. Yours sounds like it could be a commercial for Jeeps.
How did you know she was Turkish?
The "Miss Istanbul 1997" sash across her shoulder?
After living in Germany for many years I became pretty good at differentiating ethnic groups.
Ahh, the girl across the bus aisle. A love with unlimited depth and possibilities. I've fallen in love many times in the Montreal Metro intoxicated by the scent of the wooden brake pads smouldering like the passion shared between two strangers until the P.A. system crackles "Terminus".
There's something very romantic about public transportation. Maybe it's the impression of anonymity in the midst of a large crowd together with the time pressure of knowing you only have a very short time to act.
I've never gotten the like a jerk thing. I prefer to be the jerk in any relationship. I want to be dumber, meaner and uglier. You'd think that would leave a wide variety of men but so far that hasn't panned out, either.
I think some girls are programmed to think a jerk must possess something worthy of winning if he can get away with being such a jerk.
Interesting! No wonder I disappoint so many people. I've absolutely no reason for being this way.
I have absolutely no interest in jerks. My love interests…I think I have always met with them, spoken, or been spoken to. Why do ships pass in the night?
I almost got hit by a bus once.
Had I actually been hit, I assume I would have gotten quite a bit of sympathy from the ladies. Which would have been nice. Especially after being hit by a bus.
Very nice. It sorta reminds me of a open love letter I wrote on my old blog, seven years ago.
I think they are amusingly similar, despite the different tones, especially the imagined awkward outcomes.
Coulda, woulda, really shouldn'ta, glad I didn'ta… I've had a couple of those myself.
Too bad they didn't have Craig's List's 'missed connections' back then in Germany. I peruse it all the time and so far nobody has described me. It's kind of a let-down, even though I'm quite happily married.
I was that 'more than just athletically-built' girl with the sunglasses on top of her head to keep her on-the-verge-of-frizzy curls out of her eyes while forcing her 12-year-old to look at thong underwear at Target while his friends walked by in search of school supplies. Remember me? I still had my blue-tooth in my ear because I forgot to take it off and I was carrying a super-sized box of tampons in my basket next to the MiraLAX. I had one spot just below my right knee that was peeling because I didn't get sunscreen there, and also just at my hairline.
I'm still waiting for your post, missed-connection.
I don't know — I think having "missed connections" as a safety net would have diminished the excitement of the actual encounter. And imagine how much time he would have spent agonizing over the wording of his "missed connections" ad.
I would totally be crushing on you but, seriously, that motorcycle thing would help. I didn't want to mention it.
Ah, I had one of those. We first saw each other on a bus, too. It was an unusually cold spring in England, I was an exchange student. My girlfriends were complaining about the weather and how they had to wear two pairs of socks at a time. To reduce laundry, they would switch out the inner and outer pair and re-wear. He was laughing at my friends, and so was I. We exchanged a knowing glance. After that, I saw him all over town, but he was always too shy to talk to me. Around the 5th time, I got a bashful 'hiya.' I still think about him sometimes, 10 years later, and wonder what his name was, and if all his teeth have browned, as British teeth are wont to do.
You are a hell of a writter, pal. Got any books?
Hello! This is very romantic. Lucky girl!
ANYONE PLEASE TELL ME WHO WROTE THIS BLOG? WHERE IS THE GUY WHO WROTE THIS BLOG FROM???
Try reading a few posts to find out.
Haha Good Greatsby, I agree that there's something romantic in the public transportation. You pass through someone's life just for a few minutes yet its effect might last forever. I remember I was among the crowd taking the same bus like everybody else after an amazing concert and a young man at my age, perhaps 18 or 19, gave me a bucket. Later I came across him somewhere and we smiled at each other recalling our shared memory. His face is stuck in my mind. It was something naive and pure like the beautiful white flowers he gave me…unpolluted, unspoiled.