I have an obsession with Craigslist. Yes, I commonly hop on when I’m bored to skim through personals, roommate ads and my favourite… missed connections.

If you don’t know what the missed connections page is, let me explain. It’s a place where people submit posts about a specific person they passed (at a certain time and place) that they regret not connecting with.  They’ll list their contact info in hopes of them seeing it and possible reconnecting.

Many will be overdramatic and ridiculous like, “I was wearing plaid. You were wearing pink. You caught my eye at 8 a.m. at Yonge and Dundas. I can’t get your smile out of my mind.” Others are more sincere and allude to a full conversation that must have taken place, but due to an unforeseen departure, were never able to exchange contact information.

I vowed never to post. But the other week, I caved.

I was walking up my street, on my way to work. A cute guy wearing a green Hooters shirt was walking toward me, smiling.

“Hey,” he said with a huge grin.

“Hi!”

We both slightly giggled and passed each other.

As I strolled into work, I realized I made it in before my boss and decided to get my morning dose of Craigslist.

As I skimmed through the many missed connections, I couldn’t get my morning encounter out of my mind. I thought, what the heck? Let me put up a post.

I immediately got a bunch of creepers sending me pictures and wanting to go out. Ugh. I was regretting it immediately.

Until I got a response that read: “I know this is random, but I really think it was me.”

I responded right away. “The guy I passed was wearing a Hooters shirt. Do you have one? If so, what colour?”

Dun, dun, dun. The moment of truth.

His response?

“GREEN.”

It was him.

We emailed back and forth until we decided to meet for a date. I gave him my number and hoped for the best.

He called me two days later to confirm. The conversation turned into an hour long chat about the Leafs, favourite drinks and our obsession with Hooters wings.

It was all too good to be true. And it was.

We both had busy schedules so we decided to meet for an hour to grab a quick drink.

In that hour, he told me his complete LIFE STORY.

This included details about his ex, his family drama and the time his friend lit a chicken on fire and they watched it die.

“That’s not even cool,” I said. Note to all guys: ANIMAL CRUELTY IS NEVER COOL.

I changed the topic to travelling and my itch to go to South Africa.

“I’d like to travel but I can’t right now,” he said.

“Oh are you saving up? I know it can be expensive,” I said.

“No, no. It’s not the money. It’s that… I can’t leave the country.”

“You can’t leave Canada?”

“Not for another year…”

I’m sure you’ve guessed it. I was on a date with a criminal.

It was a bar fight a few years ago. Bad. So bad. He told me all of this. On our first date. Keep in mind our first date was only ONE HOUR.

I guess there’s no good time to bring up info like this, so props for him to being honest from the beginning. But I couldn’t deal. I needed out ASAP.

The hour winded down and he walked me to the subway.

“I had a great time,” he said.

“Ya me…”

Before I could finish my sentence, he lunged for a kiss. And you know the 90-10 rule? You go in 90 per cent and hope the other person goes the rest of the way to meet you?  No, he went in 40 per cent and had his eyes locked shut and mouth in full pucker position.

I gave him a quick peck and ran through the turnstile.

“Call me when you get home so I know you’re safe!” he called out as I said goodbye.

I sat on the subway in shock. It was the most eventful date I had ever been on, that’s for sure.

Needless to say, although it would be an amazing “how we met” story, I will never be posting on missed connections again.

~ Amanda Cupido