How did you two meet?

They call it the meet-cute in movie terms. How the couple meets. You know, like bending over to retrieve the last packet of frozen peas from the supermarket freezer… you both reach… for that last packet. Both of you… grasping its frozen slipperiness in your fingers…a tear, green peas fleeing for their lives in the faux arctic landscape…you lock eyes into hate, love, hate, lust, something. But never indifference. 

In reality, I have never met someone in the supermarket. Have you? Maybe you have. But in reality, who strikes up a conversation over the fresh fruit aisle? A conversation that’s not with the person weighing your produce?

Places I have met men that would qualify as meet-cute material:

• plane flights to Cape Town - everytime I leant backwards in my chair, his tray would fall down (read into that what you will);
• the bet-you-can’t-get-that-guy dare of my teens; and
• the video shop (okay maybe I need to revise the shopping thing).

Anyone else was a friend of a friend’s which in novel writing terms is so boring.  No-one wants to read about how you shambled over to your mate Ricky’s braai, and then there was this guy…Where’s the romance in that? Where’s the destiny? The kismet? The meant to be…? Sure, you could argue that if you hadn't decided to go to that braai, but had decided to stay home instead..duh, duh, duh - you never would have met. But literary value? Nah. 

That’s why aeons ago, I started collecting stories. You know the kind - how did you meet, how did you know? Let me tell you one thing, there are a lot of braai stories out there. If there’s one thing I can glean from this informal research is that friend of a friend tends to be a winner.

But occasionally I get some goodies, like:

• trapped in a lift;
• gate-crashing a wedding, and so was he; and
• at an all girls’ function, and he was the stripper.

How did you meet?