The Wasted "Cute Meet"

So this week at work--you should know that I work in women's clothing...hold up...I should say, I work in a women's clothing store; however, I do not work in the women's clothing that I sell; my clothes are from Target. Anyway, I am at work and we are working on this really amazing new display which involves huge sheets of white paper cut out in shapes of trees and rabbits and such for the holidays.  So me and this girl (or this girl and I) are busily working at cutting out trees, and to do so we taped the huge sheets of white paper to the wall and are both using scalpels to intricately cut out the design.  So we have been cutting and chatting--you should know that I work with pretty cute girls who sell women's clothing; it's nothing for me to work along side a pretty cute girl; I have a very cute wife who is way out of my league and way out of the league of the pretty cute girls I work with, but it should be stated that I was working side by side with a pretty cute girl.  So we are chatting and cutting and I realize that there is an iPod that we can listen to; it's not my iPod and it's not the girl's iPod but it is there and we can listen to it, so I flip through the artist list and come to...wait for it...Chicago.

You're the meaning in my life
You're the inspiration
You bring feeling to my life
You're the inspiration
Wanna have you near me
I wanna have you hear me sayin'
No one needs you more that I need you

  

 So the pretty cute girl is also kind of young, so I don't think she will like Chicago the same way I do, (my older brother used to blast the greatest hits album out of his basement bedroom the summer he discovered music and the rest of us discovered, if not music, then at least our ability to memorize every lyric to every one of Chicago's greatest hits).

So if it's gotta be this way,
Don't worry, baby, I can TAKE THE NEWS OKAY!

But if you see me walking by,
And the tears are in my eyes,
Look away, baby, look away.
If we meet on the streets someday,
And I don't know what to say,
Look away, baby, look away.
Don't look at me;
I don't want you to see me this way. 

But as it turns out the pretty cute girl has pretty cute taste in music and within moments we are both cutting and softly singing to ourselves along with the greatest American "Rock and Roll Band with Horns"! 

Everything was going great; after all, I was not working on the sales floor (something all of us who work retail hate to do) and I get to listen to my favorite music while dissecting paper in the name of art.  Both me and the pretty cute girl were having a good time, not really thinking about the other until...

Everybody needs a little time away
I heard her say, from each other
Even lovers need a holiday
Far away from each other

Hold me now
It's hard for me
To say I'm sorry
I just want you to stay

After all that
We've been through
I will make it up to you
I promise to

And after all that's
Been said and done
You're just the part of me
I can't let go 

Somewhere just after Hold me now, it's hard for me to say I'm sorry the tape that we had used to secure the top of our paper gave up.  At this point the pretty cute girl and I were both sitting on the floor at either sides of the same piece of paper cutting and sort of singing.  The paper fell gracefully and slowly behind our backs. Then, in one instant, where one moment I had just been at work and focusing on not cutting my hand or face, the next moment I was in a white lit tent with my teenage anthem softly playing in the back round with a pretty cute girl who, at this point had been freshly dusted with glitter that was on the table next to us, but the swoop of air from the falling paper had literally floated sparkles all around us and they settled on our eyelashes and shoulders just at the moment we looked at each other, and it was magic...only just with the wrong person. And both of us felt it (or at least in my telling of the story) and we both stood right up and re-taped and un-glittered and laughed and went back to cutting but with this edge blurred moment still in our heads, how everything had happened just so to create, honestly, the most lovely and romantic moments in my life (as far as set goes) but it was wasted on being with the girl I work with whose name I sometimes forget.

My wife and I don't have a 'Cute Meet'.  She was sort of dating my friend and we sort of snuck around hiding our dating until we accidentally fell in love and then we sort of moved off to LA together.  It was much more complicated and drawn out then even that synopsis was, and in the end we aren't left with an adorably adorable story to tell our grand kids but we do have each other and I would take that over some paper-wrapped, glitter girl any day. And now I have.