52 New Friends

I was walking back from lunch with a friend sometime in the spring of this year.   My friend was talking about being in love.   “When was the last time you were in love?” they asked. I paused, thinking, trying to be honest with myself.   “I don’t know.   Maybe fifteen years ago?   But that may have been more obligation than love.   I’m not sure I’ve ever really been in love.” My friend stopped walking and stared at me, mouth gaping open.   “I feel sorry for you.”   There’s been a lot of times in my life that I’ve wondered if something is wrong with me.   I think I can be charming.   I think I can be well-liked.   But when it comes down to having a deep, personal relationship with anyone, I have been an absolute failure.   Mostly, I feel like the major relationships that have come into my life have cared about me for surface reasons and nothing more.   It has left me empty. But the optimist in me never lets me give up.   It is the reason I continued to stay on the onli

Keira is a business contact.  We had our first phone call more than a year ago.  She had just started her job working in the marketing department of an event center and I was the contact on file.  There was something about the melody of her voice that made me immediately like her.  In fact, I think I may have even suggested grabbing a drink at one point early on…but it was said in passing.  I don’t think she took me seriously. We didn’t meet face-to-face until April or May of this year, and it was specifically for business as we sat across from one another in her conference room.  We went through the business at hand and when we were almost done, Keira made mention of the fact that she was single.  That caught my attention.  She is a beautiful redhead.  We are close to the same age and neither of us have any children. I’d been wanting to find someone to go with me to social events for singles and Keira was perfect!  We scheduled in some time to meet up for cocktails in a Sex-i

I was picking up tacos for a business meeting.  The restaurant didn’t have them ready so I stood talking with the guy working behind the window.  He was a nice-looking young man with an easy way about him.  I gathered he was the restaurant owner’s son.  While we were chatting, I mentioned my mission to meet 52 new friends this year.  His eyes widened and sparkled.  “I want to be number fifty,” he declared. So, we agreed to meet up for coffee.  But in order to understand the son, I quickly learned I would first have to know about the father. Derek’s father grew up in a small, poverty-stricken town in a Mexico.  By the age of 6, he was already leading a herd of sheep across the Mexican terrain on a daily basis and working as a sheep herder.  His father loved soccer as boy, but there was never any money to buy him soccer shoes.  By Derek’s account, his grandfather was an alcoholic.  It was a bad situation for Derek’s father so at the age of fourteen, he illegally crossed the bord

It was pouring rain on the day I was supposed to meet Dan.   The small coffee shop I’d picked out was crammed with people trying to avoid what was falling from the sky.   Somehow, I managed to claim a small table in the middle of the noisy chaos.   I was just beginning to think the timing of this meeting was bad when Dan lowered his black umbrella and walked in.   If you saw Dan in a crowd of people, you would probably overlook him, but he has a way about him that took me back to my Midwestern roots, to a time when I only knew people were good, solid and dependable.   He seemed to be half man, half twelve-year-old boy, although I’d estimate his age to be relatively close to mine.   He’d been sent to me through another friend of mine who told me Dan had triplets.   That’s really the only thing I knew about him.   He is conspicuously absent on social media.   I gave him a minute to settle in and he ordered a cup of coffee, which is apparently a rarity for him.   Dan never reall