Everyone’s got their ‘I need a 10-minute break’ websites. The New York Times, Gawker, ESPN, the BBC, Facebook, Gothamist. The list, of course, goes on. One of my personal internet-abetted procrastination favorites used to be Craigslist NYC missed connections…until someone emphasized the ‘missed’ bit.
For the most part, the posts are really sweet (e.g. Brunette with parrot umbrella, reading Anna Karenina on the downtown 6 Saturday night; we had a moment – want to meet for coffee? or Indian girl with sweet smile at the laundromat on the corner of Meserole and Leonard last Sunday…your keds were soaked from the rain). The posts strike a chord with me because they embody what I’ve always imagined must be the most romantic way to meet a lover: Someone singles you out of a crowd when you’re not doing anything out of the ordinary (just reading a book on the subway, say), and thinks to him/herself There’s something special about that one.
In the ‘most romantic way to meet a lover’ scenario, though, the person doing the noticing has the balls to approach the one he’s singled out as special, and make a move. Missed connections is all about dropping the ball, meeting your ‘love at first sight,’ and letting her (or him) slip through your fingers. Which is, admittedly, rather deflating. The posts I had originally scrolled through with a smile on my face, because they suggested that my ‘most romantic way to meet a lover’ scenario actually happens, are in actuality indicative of just the opposite.
Because, who, in reality, scrolls through missed connections searching for a reference to themselves? A friend’s friend told me a little while ago of a friend who had had a missed connection with a TV repair man, found him via Craigslist missed connections, and proceeded to engage him in a casual encounter. Not exactly the romantic lover scenario I had been envisioning, nor terribly reliable…everyone knows someone who knows someone who…
The good news is that – and this I share with utmost confidence in my sources – sometimes, on rare occasion, the subway connection ball does not get dropped.
Two female friends have picked up men on the subway – for one, the connection was speaking French; for the other, I forget, but later that night, a connection was certainly made 
More recently, a male friend was approached while he was on the platform waiting for the train, just standing there with his earphones in. He’s a bit spacey at the best of times, so I can imagine that when he’s waiting for the subway on his own, tunes in, he’s probably oblivious to the world.
So he’s waiting for the train, and a girl taps him on the shoulder, out of his underground reverie, and he takes out his earphones and turns to her. She’s noticed him around, she says, at school (graduate) and just wanted to say hello. He says oh, hey, nice to meet you. They chat for a bit, and he’s about to bid her farewell, when she decides she has the balls to say, “Do you mind if I call you sometime? Can I have your number?”
He’s shocked – not because he doesn’t get any – but because he’s being picked up on the subway. By a random girl. Who noticed him when he was just standing there, doing nothing out of the ordinary. He’s flattered and impressed – the girl’s got guts. He doesn’t think he’s interested, but he does meet up with her for drink. He seemed to think she had earned it.
None of these stories are perfect — no subway pick ups turned happily ever afters yet, but it’s a start. If you — lusting after the same guy you’ve been noticing on your commute for the last three years — don’t say anything, it’s just another missed connection (writes the girl who would never ever approach a random guy on the subway).
Point being though, missed connections is no longer on my procrastination list. I’ve found it’s preferable to ask folks about their subway pick up stories rather than read all the subway i-wanted-to-pick-you-up-but-didn’t stories that go down in this town.
