After I graduated from Ohio State, I traveled a semester for my sorority, Phi Mu, before landing my first corporate job.
There was this guy… isn’t there always?… I’d crushed on my senior year. But after graduation, we’d gone our separate ways. While I traveled with my sorority and later my corporate job, he traveled for a food company.
Elsie the Cow was his charge.
We stayed in touch via a few letters but nothing major. Winter rolled to spring and Phi Mu sent me with another consultant to the University of Florida.
I’d heard the cow man was in the state so my co-consultant and I, Stacey, headed out to find him.
I knew two things: Tampa and a food convention That was it. Using my vast reach of logic, I concluded the convention had to be… near an airport. Yea, that’s it! An airport. When I hit the first airport signs, I took the exit.
Randomly turned left.
A quarter of a mile down the road, on the right, was… a convention center. Can you believe it? And it was housing a food show.
Stacey and I walked in and there was cow man. Front and center with the main “squeeze”at his side, Elsie.
What a coincidence, right? Must be fate. Kismet. God…
To compound this extraordinary event, I ran into cow man a year later. I’d been in my corporate job for about six months when I was sent out with a senior co-worker on my first road trip.
We’d worked hard all week and on the first Saturday, our Macon counterpart, Bob, offered to take us to the Cherry Blossom Festival.
As we pulled up, I joked, “I wonder if Elsie the Cow is here.”
“Yea, she is,” Bob said.
Sure enough, the cow man and Elsie were at the Cherry Blossom Festival.
Weird! Coincidence! That’s when a young woman starts getting “God must be in this because…” ideas.
But He wasn’t. These seemingly miraculous connections had nothing to do with love or Mr. Right. I’m not sure what they meant but it’s still a fun story to tell.
Lest you think I gave up my ability to randomly find people and places, fear not.
My company sent me to a large city and for some reason, I traveled without directions to the job site. So, I figured, “Newspaper… downtown…” and pointed my rental in that direction.
Took the first down town exit.
There was the paper.
But my luck ran out on me a year later when another co-worker and I were sent to Long Island for an installation. The newspaper was the name of the county and we had no idea how to find the site.
We had to break down and call the office. Embarrass!
But in other news, Facebook has been another great place to meet up with people. My first grade boyfriend and his wife Friended me. When they were in Orlando a few years ago for a conference, my husband and I met them for breakfast.
I thought that was pretty cool.
A few years later they attended a writing class I taught in Oklahoma.
What about you? Ever have a random meeting that you thought meant something but in the end it didn’t?
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Rachel Hauck purposefully writes book in her tower. Her latest debuted on the CBA bestseller list. Visit her web site at www.rachelhauck.com.