six degrees of unhealthy adoration.
© 1996 Jamie Zawinski <jwz@jwz.org>

There's this guy I had known (electronically, not face to face) off and on for about a decade. Recently I found myself on a mailing list with him again, and in passing, he mentioned a previous girlfriend he had had, and her distinctive tattoo.

He's on the east coast and I the west; yet a few days later, I was out at a club, and I noticed a girl who had that same tattoo. (Plate. Shrimp. Plate o' Shrimp.) So the next day I fired off an email to him:

Hey, guess what! I saw someone with that tattoo. Could that be her? So why'd she dump you anyway?

He replied almost immediately with something along the lines of, ``oh, that's nice, tell her I said hi.'' And then about a half an hour later, came back with

Ever have one of those moments where you hear about someone you dated and its no big deal, and then 10 minutes later you feel like someone dropped a load of bricks on your head? Suck!

It turned out that she was a friend-of-a-friend through another path as well, and I met her eventually. About six months later, we were talking, and in the midst of the general smalltalk, I said, ``so you used to date so-and-so, right?''

She seemed to be momentarily hit with that same load of bricks, and began a rapid-fire stream of questions: ``Wait, how did you know that? Did I tell you that? Who told you that? Do you know him? Have you actually met him? How did you know that?''

So I told her the story, thoroughly enjoying how freaked out she had become at the dropping of a single name. When I mentioned his ``load of bricks'' comment, she freaked again:

``Oh my god, he's still obsessing about me? I just sent him a postcard! I had no idea! Oh god, I'll never write him again, this is too much.''

That's me, little Mr. Matchmaker.