During my walk through Central Park yesterday on a rare afternoon (ish) off, I was feeling brave and free. I had one hour to stroll to my tea-date with my roommate, and only the slightest idea where I was going in the park. I emerged onto a familiar landmark and saw, to my delight, a guitar/cello* combo playing.
And ERMAHGERD you guys the cello* player was gorgeous. Curly blond hair peeking out from under a fedora, Ray Ban sunglasses, an ironic T-shirt tucked into ironically high-waisted pleated pants held up with suspenders. Ironic hipster jackpot.
My sunglass gaze caught his sunglass gaze. I slowed my roll and his head turned to follow me. My head flashed an ingenious plan:
I would pull a dollar from my wallet and write a message on it:
“Oh hai foxy cello* player! My name is Meghan. 555-555-5555.”
Then, I would toss it into the guitar case with the tips. Crazy! Insane! Genius!
Only, I didn’t have a pen.
Instead, the cute cello* player and I held our gaze as I walked away, tossing my hair over my shoulders and feeling the early autumn sun burn my cheeks.
Over tea, I told my roomie about my crazy plan. Later, I asked to borrow a pen to sign my paycheck to deposit it in the ATM. And guess what? She didn’t have a pen either!
“Oh, how will we ever nab street-musician husbands if we don’t carry pens with us?” I lamented.
Later, on the subway ride home, I pondered random encounters and fate.
“I can’t stop thinking about the butterfly effect,” I confessed. “If I had had a pen, the course of my life could have been completely different.”
“Or, it could have stayed exactly the same,” my wise roommate reasoned.
“True. But then, I wouldn’t have had to borrow a pen from the restaurant to sign my paycheck.”
The moral of the story is, always carry a pen.
* in the end, it turned out for the better that I didn’t write this message on the bill, because the hot cello player I was lusting after turned out, after several hours’ contemplation, to be playing an upright bass. And when hitting on street musicians, it’s probably a good idea to be able to correctly identify their instruments.
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