Strangers and love

Can you miss someone that you only barely met?

Can you love and appreciate a total stranger?

I think yes to both counts.

I've been frequenting a Starbuck's on the way home from work. It beats sitting around my house all night. I get to read, drink whatever the coffee of the day is, and watch people.

Mostly watch people.

There is an employee there who intrigues me. He's young and pierced and dreadlocked and bandanna wrapped. Let's just say that at first glance you wouldn't think that he and I would be very simpatico.

And we're probably not.

But he's so fun to watch. He actually looks at his customers. And talks to them. And there is something in his smile that is genuine.

He's a total stranger...and yet...

It's fun watching customers, too. Most bark their order and never really look around. It's as if they treat the help as just that--automated help.

But this girl who came in tonight caught my attention. She made the other barista laugh as they chatted. They too were engaged in one another, albeit only briefly.

Another total stranger, and yet I feel as if I know her in some small way. She's a frappacino drinking pediatrics nurse (the animal print nurses smock gives that away) who makes teenaged coffee-shop employees smile in the midst of their toil.

That says a lot, doesn't it?

And then there's the missing:

There are some people who I miss that I feel I have no business missing. People I met in faraway places. Individuals to whom I've only been briefly introduced. Can you miss people that you hardly know?

I think so. I think I miss the potential, the possibility. Sometimes you can just tell when that dynamic is in place--enough shared personality and interest to generate relationship, enough difference to bring you back for more.

No sooner have you identified the catalyst and it's gone. Will you cross paths again? Only God knows. Would it be the same? Again, only God...