In early 2008, shortly after I had knee surgery, I let a new friend talk me into hitting the bars in Tempe to go dancing. It was laparoscopic surgery so it was pretty non-invasive, but I had all kinds of problems. They had already taken 2 litres of fluid off of it over the course of 3 visits, and then when I had too much fluid taken away, I had to have non-chicken-based synovial fluid injected in (I’m allergic to raw eggs). It took me an entire year to be able to straighten out my leg, even after five months of physical therapy.

Anyway, I digress; I went out for a night of dancing. Already I felt much older than everyone else at 34, when most of the crowd was 21-23, including my friend. Let me tell you, those young boys were not shy! One guy was just about stripped down from the waist up and he decided he was going to bump and grind all over my booty. I had to tell him to calm the fuck down because of my bad knee, so he just decided to hold onto my hips tighter while he pretended to bang me from behind.

I finally got away from him and had about two songs before a tall, lanky, tipsy drunk young man started dancing on me. I had an even harder time with him! He kept banging into my knee. After a while, I had enough. I convinced my friend it was time to go.

I didn’t know my friend did this, but she would read the “Missed Connections” portion of Craigslist for entertainment. She called me one night and said, “Holy crap, C., this is you!!”

Sure enough, a guy, aged 24, considered me a “missed connection” – meaning I didn’t give him my phone number when I headed out, basically. In the ad he wrote about how he “protected” my knee from everyone else. (Drunkass, you did no such thing.) I emailed him back and we traded a few emails, but I couldn’t pretend to be very interested. He was still at the binge-drinking phase.

The very first episode I listened to on Modern Love: The Podcast had to do with one woman’s experience with the “Missed Connections” section. It’s a short piece, especially if you just listen to the story and not the interview afterwards.

https://www.wbur.org/2016/01/20/missed-connection-modern-love