Today I have a love story to share with you all.

At approximately 12:20 this morning I was at the shopping center where my gym is located.  I parked my car and headed upstairs to Safeway.  I approached the stairs from the right.  From the left, a tall, handsome gentleman wearing a beanie was approaching the same stairs.  He was clearly coming from the gym.  He said hello, I gave him a quick head nod, and we both headed upstairs to the store.  I headed to the sports drink aisle to purchase my workout beverage and behold, the gentleman from the stairs was in the same aisle.  Flustered, I grabbed the purple can, checked out at self checkout, and walked outside.  I thought to myself two things. 1. "That guy was pretty good looking" and 2. "I didn't realize they made guava rockstar recovery."  They do not make guava rockstar recovery, for those of you in suspense.  I took one sip and realized that the delicious carbonated splendor could not POSSIBLY be legit.  It wasn't.  In my flustered state, I had grabbed a 140 calorie per serving rockstar-juice, not a 10 calorie rockstar-recovery.  I paused for a moment of decision.  I certainly am not going to drink 140 calories (I once had a nightmare that I was drinking diet coke and then realized that it wasn't diet coke and that I had consumed 300 calories of soda.  It was awful.  Also, Mr. Ferriss is adamant that one must not drink one's calories).  I thought about giving it to the friendly homeless man sitting on the adjacent bench, but I couldn't come up with a way to offer a homeless man an open rockstar energy drink with one sip taken without explanation.  And even with an explanation it would be insulting at best.  I thought about taking it back, but, again, even if the explanation was effective, I can only assume that they would not trade me my desired beverage for an open can.  So I threw it away and went back in.

Keep in mind that all of the above happened within about 2 minutes.  I tried to play it cool as I sauntered back to the sports drink aisle to purchase the correct, carcinogenic, delicious, rockstar.  As I approached the drinks a second time, the mystery man resurfaced.  This time he spoke.  He introduced himself as Christian.  I said hello and explained that I would love to chat, but that I had to get back downstairs to the gym or I was going to miss my class (after the mishap with the rockstar I was cutting it close).  He said we could chat another time if I gave him my number and casually pulled out his phone.  I balked and told him, "I'm here every Tuesday and Thursday at noon.  Come find me."  We shook hands and I ran downstairs.

My initial reaction to this whole interaction was similar to the one I have when people whistle out of there trucks at me.  Flattery and dismissal.  Then I realized I had made a huge mistake.  I almost ran back up the stairs to try to rectify the rejection, but (as with the rockstar debacle), figured that the result would be crushing awkwardness for all parties rather than a solution.  Here is what I realized:

As you may know, I have recently been experimenting with dating online and let's just say that it has been a mixed bag.  The point of telling you that is as follows: I clearly have no problem going out with a near stranger in a desperate attempt to forge human connection.

And after reflection, Christian may have been the one.

1. He too has a schedule in which he goes to the gym midday.  This could mean that he is unemployed, true.  It could also mean that he is independently fabulously wealthy and just looking for someone to spend copious amounts of money on after a shared noontime workout.  I will never know.

2. He too enjoys rockstar.  Now this may be a stretch, as I did not see him holding a beverage, but I can only assume his lingering in the sports drink aisle was because he could not choose which recovery drink to buy after his arduous workout.  It could also mean that he's a recovering meth addict trying to wean off the habit with caffeine and sugar. Again, a mystery we will never solve.    

3. (This one is most important) He watched me pick up a rockstar and walk to check out, and then mysteriously return 2 minutes later sans rockstar, pick up another one, and head back to the register.  And he still asked for my number.  Clearly this is a man who can roll with the punches. 

So here was a man with a flexible schedule, a like-minded view of fitness, a fondness for refreshments of questionable nutritional value, and a willingness to overlook extremely bizarre public behavior.  In short: the one that got away.

I would therefore like to make a suggestion to the world at large.  Clearly, as a society, we've given up on finding love via drawn out courtship and high school formals.  We are happy to replace traditional connectivity with hope and wifi.  So let's reevaluate our categorization of random hollering strangers as "scrubs"   and instead think of them as "matches."  Let's all be a little bolder in our flagrant public come ons and more accepting of those who can take a quest for love out of the virtual and into the physical realm.

In conclusion, I should have offered Christian the guava rockstar and taken a chance on love.  Next time, I'll be ready.