How To Meet People and Meet People ~ Blog 30

Go Twins!

When we were considering moving from Maine to Massachusetts, The Wife raised a valid concern: How are we going to meet people?

In the past, we became friends with people we lived with and with my co-workers. In Boston, we wouldn't know anybody and I wasn't going to be working with anybody who lived near us. It was a valid question. How are we going to meet people?

The answer, it turns out, was to turn me loose in a public park. The truth is way less creepy than that sounds.

We live near a park where people commonly allow their dogs to be off-leash. As I have a dog that I commonly allow to be off-leash, Daisy Duke and I are there often. But, as of the end of August, the only person I'd met was Ray, an 85-year-old former jazz musician and, he says, World War II veteran.

In early September, there was a skinny guy sitting on a park bench with a Minnesota Twins cap on. This is odd, in part because we're Red Sox territory and in part because nobody outside of Minnesota and the Dakotas likes the Twins. Even as I type this, I'm wearing a Red Sox sweatshirt. It was cheap. Stop judging me.

I walked over to the guy.

"Are you a Twins fan?" I asked.

"No."

"Oh, well, you have a Twins cap on, and that made me wonder."

"Yeah, I used to live there," he told me.

"Oh? Where?"

"Stillwater."

"Uh, that's funny because I graduated from Stillwater High School," I told him.

"Oh, my wife graduated from there."

"When?"

"1999," he told me.

"My brother graduated in 1999."

Not only does Nutmeg's Mom know my brother, she actually likes him. They were in theater people together and you know how theater people are. (Disclosure: I lettered in theater).

These coincidences are the foundation of our relationship with our new BFFs. In truth, Stillwater High is one of the biggest in Minnesota and everybody in their right mind should want to live there. Still, it was absurdly coincidental that we had connections to people in East Boston.

A few dinner dates and an ill-fated candlepin bowling trip later, we have new BFFs. It's unusual, as a couple, that we both like both components of the other couple. Sometimes, the guys like each other but don't care for the ladies, or vice-versa. This time, it's all mutual and consensual. That also sounds way creepier than I meant.

Nutmeg's Dad and I hang out often because he works at home, which means we can go on long walks out to the Airport Hyatt at 2-ish. We get along famously, in part because he brought good scotch over to our house for the first dinner date and, in part, because I had good gluten-free beer in my refrigerator to offer him.

It's improbable, to be sure. But, sometimes, that's how things work out.