One in a ...?

I would love it if someone better at math than me (and don't get me wrong, I'm not too shabby when it comes to the numbers, I just don't have the time to lay this one out) could figure out the odds of this conundrum. In a city of 3 million, what are the odds that a Missed Connection posted on the website Craigslist will be found by the actual intended recipient? Because depending on the results of that math, I just may need to take my ass into a casino and roll with it.

Here's how the story goes....there's this boy (isn't there always?) who has caught my eye on a few occasions and I was interested in knowing more about him. Catch is he works in one of my favorite hang out/relax and unwind places so it made it slightly awkward to approach him as the situation is undoubtedly me=customer, him=working....and who really wants to get hit on while at work? So I decided on some high tech recon by way of the glorious internet. I mean really, what can you not do these days by way of the good old WWW? It's almost as if the internet's main goal was to elevate stalking to a higher grass-stain free plane of existence... but I digress.

So, clever as I thought I was, I posted myself a pretty much 90 percent false missed connection on Craigslist. I find it not even remotely possible that there are readers out there unfamiliar with at least the concept of Craigslist, but if there are check it out here and prepare to have the rest of your day sucked away down the rabbit hole.

The whole idea was to try and flush out information about the kid, so I pretended that I had just recently stopped in the store for the first time and saw him and that said store was not really in my neighborhood. Truth - I'm in there all the damn time, I have been checking him out for awhile now, and it's completely and totally in my hood.

So the hours pass and I actually get a reply from a supportive neighbor who suggests "if hes single you should totally go for it, i live in the area and ive seen him a few times and thought he was totally cute!" (all punctuation and spelling complete from original sender). Not quite what I was looking for, but hey it's good to know strangers got my back.

Then it happens. The email comes in to my inbox like a stealth bomber and knocks me completely for a loop. I get a reply, with all the information I could of ever wanted. I get a reply from him. Complete with last name so now he is Google-able (which may not be a word quite yet, but ya'll know exactly what I mean).

And now I am stuck between a rock and a really embarrassing place. If/when I reply I have to now fess up that the original missed connection was pretty much a recon mission and that in reality he knows perfectly well who I am. As soon as he sees my name on the email he will probably figure it out.

So as I formulate my eventual reply, and I will reply because now I have to see what will happen, I just need someone to do the math for me on the odds of this whole damn thing happening, because if I need to rearrange my schedule to get to an East Chicago riverboat....