Why is it that so many of our stories begin just like this, with these words, “I met someone the other day”? There are seven billion people living on this rock. Chances are you cross paths with hundreds if not thousands of them each and every day. You wait behind them in line at the grocery store, you sit next to them in traffic, you likely even eat with them in restaurants. If you live in a major metropolitan area, where the population density exceeds the average rural farm field, chances are that number is even higher, you are living in a place where it is mathematically probable that you will meet someone who looks just like you. And yet it is, that our lives are earmarked by certain chance encounters with significant people, all the while we ignore the masses of humans swirling around us, each one of them waking and sleeping, eating and bathing, waiting for their own chance encounter with that significant person who will begin their story.
And so it goes, I met a girl, and she is no ordinary girl. Although I am not sure why anyone really says that. What is ordinary anyway? If by ordinary you mean she lives in a two bedroom apartment with a roommate and a dog, that she gets up every morning and goes to a job that is repetitive, that she wears a minimal amount of make up, then yes she is ordinary. However, ordinary stops there…and this is where the story begins. I wasn’t expecting to meet her, I wasn’t looking for her, I wasn’t looking for anyone really, I was just going through my day as I always do, and there she was. Barefoot, and beautiful, yes she has a pretty face and eyes that a person could get lost in for days, if not a lifetime, but is was less about the way the light bounced off of her, and more about the way the light radiated from her. She didn’t immediately stand out to me, and that’s more of a statement about who I am than who she is. Pretty girls are always parading around, catching glances from the boys, and knowing it. The truly beautiful ones subtly capture your attention, more in the way they carry themselves when no one is looking. But she, she was different, she was alone in a room full of people, smiling and letting the night air dance across her skin, the occasional breeze rippled through her hair.