On Sept. 29, shortly before dusk, a young woman lugging a rather large suitcase showed up on the Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin, Texas, to watch the bats.
The bridge was crowded, as it is every night between March and October when onlookers gather to watch a colony of 1.5 million Mexican free-tailed bats dart and swoop, scooping up some 30,000 pounds of unsuspecting insects.
She asked a young man if she could stand next to him. He scooched half a step to his left.
She was from Vancouver, and told him about a similar, though not so dramatic, nightly bird event, the twice-daily flight of crows to and from their roost at Still Creek in Burnaby.
They didn’t even exchange names. The bats never appeared. It’s hardly an auspicious start for a love story, or even a friendship, but since that sunny evening, the young man couldn’t stop thinking about the young woman — or why he didn’t have the nerve to ask for her number.
So, under the moniker “mrRedMaze,” he posted about the missed connection on Reddit.
“When it was time for you to leave, I got cold feet and didn’t ask for your number,” he wrote. “Now I’m regretting that decision, and I can’t get you out of my head.”
Although they chatted for hours, and watched the sun set over Lady Bird Lake — he even took a photo of her, on her phone — they never got past small talk.
“We were both very shy,” said mrRedMaze.
He told Postmedia he would prefer not to reveal his real identity publicly for now. He was in Austin on business, and while replies on Reddit have been encouraging — “This literally sounds like the makings of a country song and I am here for it,” commented IAmDisneyPrincess — he’s aware of the criticisms that a lonely-hearts post might draw in professional circles.
(For the record, mrRedMaze did provide Postmedia with his real name and place of residence, which checked out.)
As the minutes and hours ticked by, only a few bats appeared. They realized they may have been standing on the wrong part of the bridge, and made a move, but it was too late. “Maybe they had performance anxiety,” said mrRedMaze.
It didn’t really matter, he explained. It wasn’t really about the bats. They were enjoying the moment and the conversation. When it was time to leave, they went their separate ways.
“I didn’t want to intrude,” said mrRedMaze. It was getting dark, he was a stranger, and he didn’t want to press her for information. “Later, I was kicking myself,” he said.
“I feel like there was some mutual interest,” said mrRedMaze, 38, who lives in Washington state. “I’d like to maybe grab a coffee and see the crows in Vancouver. I’m not expecting anything more, but life is full of surprises.”
He said she had a light accent, was possibly Japanese, had dyed hair and was about 30 years old.
A data analysis of some 10,000 Craigslist “missed connections” posts showed the odds of a successful match are “heart-wrenchingly low.”
But who doesn’t love a longshot? A Hail Mary pass? It represents optimism, hope and second chances.
Don’t we all want that?
