Mumbles has a funny friend named Matt (technically Mumbles found him first but what’s yours is mine, right?) who came to visit one day and we somehow got onto a story or subject that led Matt to introduce us to the glorious awkwardness that is the Missed Connections section of Craigslist.  Have you been there before?!  Brace yourself if you haven’t.  There’s lots of good, free content to keep you entertained for hours (hours!), and while there’s definitely a creepy factor of 14 on a 1-to-10 scale, sometimes you come across one that’s actually a little adorable, and other times you learn things like you shouldn’t ever make eye contact with anyone at the gym. Ever.  Also, sometimes it’s like a game and folks will say something like “…if that was you, send me an email and I’ll know it’s you if you can tell me what color my hat was” and I think desperately that if I ever got really bored and nothing seemed funny, I could probably answer a bunch of these with guesses.

While we’re at it, let’s not forget that the stories of inopportune moments is a great subject for movies (see: Serendipity and the so-bad-it’s-good On The Line featuring former N*Sync’ers Lance Bass and Joey Fatone, and smokin’ hot lady Emmanuelle Chriqui).

Missed Connections: Love, Lost & Found book with illustrations by Sophie Blackall

So, next time you’re looking to fill a void in your heart, need to appreciate the collective ridiculousness of people that live near you, or you just have some time to kill: crank up “Escape (If You Like Pina Coladas),” grab a cup of coffee and head on over to the Missed Connections section of Craigslist.  Oh, and if you have a friend like Matt who truly appreciates the art of the missed connection, you might want to invest in a few copies of this insanely awesome book.

Do you have any missed connections stories to share?  Leave a comment below!

P.S. Did you know that there’s a Craigslist section of Rants & Raves?? How did I not know about this before?!  And now that I’ve told you about that, I can further confess that there are quite a few folks posting in the Missed Connections section who should be told they’re inappropriately posting a Rant and should therefore redirect their ad to be classified correctly.  I mean, you’re going through all this trouble, right?