UNMISSED CONNECTION

UNMISSED CONNECTION

Usually the subway ride to work carries a virtual guarantee of base frustration and a gentle erosion of my faith in the human race, but this morning was different.

It always makes me feel good when I see a stranger reading a book written by someone I know. It's happened a couple of times with people reading Caren Lissner's books, and this morning, on a not-terribly-packed train, there was a cute redhead reading what looked like a pretty dogeared copy of Jim Munroe's Angry Young Spaceman.

I mean, I could have said something to her (like what?

Hey, that's a cool book! That's so great that you know about him. Did you know I was in his last novel? Or maybe the one before that, gosh, he writes 'em so fast, eh? Yeah, I was maybe kindasorta in it, well there was this one conversation between him and some guy at a zine fair, and it was exactly like a conversation he and I had once upon a time, and so that could have been me in that teeny bit part on one page of that book, and yeah, isn't Jim Munroe great! So like, can I touch your hair? It'd sure be keen if I could just kill your boyfriend and move into your living room, wouldn't it!

Exactly.

), but sometimes it's just nice to let moments like that be.

Besides, I'd really like to make those moments seem normal to me, as my friends all become more successful, and I stand on their shoulders and see as far as they let me, and we all get a little bit closer to our collective goal of calling the tune for a world that is getting only smaller as we all grow into it.