“I dated a guy from Belleville once,” said the new found friend from the other side of the sectional couch.

“Oh yeah?” I peaked up from my dull and dry evidence textbook, completely unprepared for the imminent collision of worlds and lives.

“Chris Wilson.”

“NO WAYYYYYYYYYY.” I squealed. “No way no way no way … THAT is hilarious,” I said emphatically as the three of us giggled and laughed.

“I take it you know him,” says Bella the beautiful who had been otherwise neutral up to that point.

Bella and I had been friends for a few years. From the moment I met her, I knew I wanted to be her friend. I just knew I wanted to be around her. She had big brown eyes and a nervous chuckle that made her warm and instantly likeable, and she spoke frankly and candidly without one iota of ego or rudeness. She worked in a parallel department and our paths would cross every now and then, and each time I felt more and more like we’d always been friends despite the fact that we had spent very little time together. It is as though our lives are a series of coincidences alongside a series of very controlled events. I am no statistician, but if I were I would wager that Bella and I were bound to meet, and I suppose that meant that Grace, her lovely cousin and I were just as destined. Even so, it is delightful that probability delivered on this prediction in just this way, because there really are not many things greater than a chance encounter with an instant friend.

A few years ago, I began to dabble in online dating. Prompted by a friend, I set up some profiles on a few different online dating sites. I was, I can say now, an internet dating virgin and it would take more than a few rounds of experimentation to find my groove. Back in the first base days, still nervous and insecure, I had a gross shortage in my catalogue of appropriate responses. It was during this time that I had a brief and unfortunate exchange that resulted in being told that I might be too anal by a prospective suitor. I had no idea if he was worthy of even a moment of precious daydream time - his profile was full of spelling mistakes and he had no photo. He contacted me twice before deciding were were mismatched due to my anal-ness - both notes said the same thing,

“Hey baby, wanna chat?”

“If you do, email me at chriswilson@hightempmail.com.”

Needless to say, I didn’t take him up on that offer. I did, however, offer a generous and thorough critique of his profile, you know … because I wanted to help. That’s me … helpful prospective dater … helpful insensitive insulting and apparently ANAL prospective dater. I chose to delete him, block him, and to carry on despite my slightly bruised ego.

Much to my chagrin, the friend who encouraged me to take up the hobby of online dating met up with the anti-speller. “Turns out he’s pretty cute,” she shared, “crappy kisser,” she mentions, “talks like a farmer,” she adds in, “and wow do I have a lot of bug-bites from our riverside make-out session,” was the punch line. They dated about 10 minutes and then we laughed and giggled about the whole thing.

At the end of Z’s first soccer season, I did not expect to have confirmation that the fellow parent I had nodded and exchanged the odd hello with was in fact the Chris Wilson that had called me out for being so particular about spelling. I contemplated apologizing - I even went so far as to rehearse what I might say, both the comic version and the sincere version, but in the end I chickened out chose to let bygones be gone by.

Needless to say, a few years passed between then and the now that saw me sitting on Grace’s couch. I suppose the statistician would say that our mutual choice of a particular online site, our age, and our common charm raised the probability that we would both encounter the same boy … a boy balancing his life in the city with his life as the parent of a young boy Z’s age living in my small town.

Regardless - it was a remarkable coincidence deserving of the squeals and laughs we shared over it.
In a slightly different vein, as I took in the lovely sights of Washington this past weekend with Bella and Grace, I received a prompt from my brother to check out the video below, French Navy by Camera Obscura, from their 2009 album My Maudlin Career. He came across it while surfing and it struck him as something he thought I would like. My brother and I were great playmates until our teen years when his competitive hockey adventures rivaled my figure skating pursuits in separate arenas on the opposite sides of town. We don’t speak or see each other regularly, not because we don’t like or love each other, but because our individual lives are busy and we are naturally lazy when it comes to anything that is not a fire-breathing creature of danger pressed up against our faces. It was a pleasant unexpected surprise to receive this text from him. How oh how could he have known I had discovered the delight of a real live Mr. French Navy of a different sort only days before. It was another remarkable and delightful coincidence.

I am not sure what these intersections are trying to show me, but I have every reason to anticipate that it is something superbly good.