Last night during an after work happy hour at Boss Bar (also known as the classiest bar of all time), I must have mentioned in passing that I was newly single. I was at least three beers in so I’m not sure that I said it outright, but somehow the message was conveyed. This woman from real-estate whom I’ve only met a few times seized upon this fact, and asked if she could set me up with someone.

My initial reaction was to say ‘No’. Shouldn’t I be mourning Jim for a few months so that I can express the appropriate amount of sadness and wistful contemplation or something?

Instead, I hesitated awkwardly for several seconds before rambling something like, “Yeah…no…that’d be great.”

My co-worker seemed thrilled about the prospect of setting someone up. I wasn't particularly excited about the blind date, but I have to admit that her enthusiasm (and possibly the beer consumption) made me feel a little twinge of goofy optimism myself.

I guarantee you it’ll be awkward.

***

This morning, I was standing at the Wellington El stop sleepily waiting for a brown line train to rumble down the tracks and pick me up for work. After several minutes a purple line lurched into the station, and a sloppy, middle-aged man exited one of the cars. We briefly met eyes and for some reason he veered away from the exiting throng of yuppies and walked over to me. He stopped and held out his hand in a gesture that implied he wanted to shake.

“Hiya ponytail girl,” he said off-puttingly.

“Uh. Hello,” I responded and shook his hand in a stunned sort of manner.

He left, and somebody near me started laughing. I turned to see if it was someone I knew. It wasn't. It was some tall, red-headed guy. He was kind of cute so I smiled up at him and shrugged.

“You know that guy?” he asked.

“No.”

He laughed again so I smiled again.

“It’s weird,” I said, “that he would nickname me ponytail girl, since I’m not actually wearing my hair in a ponytail to begin with.”

He nodded, “Agreed. You must be one of those people.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know. A crazy magnet. You attract attention from crazy people.”

“That’s totally not true,” I lied.

We both smiled, and I leaned forward to gaze northwards up the track for lack of anything better to do. If the brown line didn’t come soon, I was going to be running even later than usual. I finally saw the lights of the train pulling into the Belmont station a few blocks north.

“The train’s coming,” I said inanely.

“You work in the Loop?”

“Yeah. You?”

“Yup.”

We didn’t say anything else, and the train arrived a minute later so I walked away from him to get in the first car. The train was completely packed. I suppose mostly because of the endless El renovations that are sadly just getting started, and the otherwise careless ineptitude of the CTA. Not that I'm bitter in regards to the state of our public transportation system. I spent the next twenty minutes pressed between strangers as we hurtled down the track on our way to staff those tall sky-scrapers jutting up in measured intervals from the Loop.