ACCOUNTANT BY DAY

Today was an interesting day.  First, I got a friendly e-mail from the new internet crush I wrote about a few weeks ago.  I finally buckled and wrote to her last night, using a Whole Foods coupon I found online as a segue into a more conversational message.  Even though I still have not finished reading her blog yet.  The whole wedding cake thing got in the way of that.  

“I TOTALLY SHOP AT THE MISSION TARGET,” she wrote.  Note the use of all capitals to emphasize how incredibly exciting this weird coincidence is, that two strangers on the internet might have something so outlandish as shopping at the same Target store in common.  I noted the capitals myself because it’s the sort of thing I would do and also the same sort of thing I would consider important enough to capitalize in the first place, and therefore to me this statement was a symbol of how even though this person is technically a stranger, she is probably some kind of kindred spirit or something.  And the fact that we probably buy our dental floss in the same physical structure?  Blows my mind.  

“I WAS THERE YESTERDAY!” she added.  I understood exactly why this was so impressive and it thrilled me to know that she “got” my e-mail and wasn’t weirded out by it and that it made sense to her to be excited over having stuff in common with a stranger from the internet.  

I actually haven’t been to that Target store since Saturday, which is when I spent fifteen minutes squinting at their selection of eye drops and trying to decide which one’s box copy most strongly implied it was up to handling the case of someone who has spent the past three days squinting because the pain of having air touch her eyeballs is frankly too much to bear.  Late that night I woke up very thirsty and my eye sockets felt like I had turned into a 10 year old corpse overnight and I wondered whether maybe my dry eyes were the result of not drinking enough water that week.  

The thing about going to a store when you know it’s someone else’s store too is, you always find yourself sort of keeping an eye out for that person, even if you don’t have any particular reason to care if you see them.  Back before the Dillons over at 75th and Quivira closed, one of the people from my old company used to try to run into this kind of antisocial guy from work who we knew shopped there.  I think she was curious what kind of stuff he bought, since he was the type of person you could easily imagine probably only did food shopping when it reached a point of dire necessity.  

And when my coworker friend recommended Noodles to me, I went there one day with my husband and the whole time we were there I was curious whether I would coincidentally see her there, since I had no reason to think she would go on that day.  But then I ran into her and her dad and was so surprised, because really, what are the odds?  So even though it was just this random occurrence, it felt somehow special and exciting.  

The fun part about seeing people at a business you both happen to frequent is that feeling of being pleasantly surprised.  So part of the game is that you don’t ever purposely strategize to run into them.  That would mean it wasn’t a true coincidence.  Also, it would just be kind of weird unless you knew them pretty well.  Really, it’s not even worthy of being called a game.  It just involves going about your business as normal, while paying more attention to the other shoppers or diners around you, and when you aren’t trying at all it seems so much cooler if you do happen to run into someone.  

I don’t go to Borders or Whole Foods that often since both are dangerous spending grounds for me, but I go to Target maybe roughly weekly or biweekly.  That means the chances of running into my internet stranger are fairly slim, but just good enough to make it fun to think about as I shop.  

In a non-creepy way.  In a way that sounds nothing like anything the Police would ever come up with.