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"An odd thing happened over the weekend. I got sort-of asked out. Sort of. And it happened in such a banal kind of way. I was at the local minute mart pumping gas, when the guy at the pump next to me (who looked a few years older but not in bad shape or anything) struck up a conversation. He asked how I liked my car because he was thinking about buying his son the same kind of car when he heads off to college next year. We chatted for a bit about mileage and as I was putting my gas cap back on he said &amp;quot;Hey, if you&amp;#039;re not doing anything, we could get a beer over at the sports bar down the street.&amp;quot; I thanked him nicely but told him I had plans already. He shrugged and said, &amp;quot;It was worth a shot.&amp;quot; I smiled and he smiled and off we went in our separate directions. Yeah, yeah, I know. I didn&amp;#039;t have plans. Go ahead, let me have it. In my defense, I don&amp;#039;t like beer. And I don&amp;#039;t like bars. And he was wearing gloves, so for all I know he could have had a wedding ring on. And I can come up with a good dozen other excuses. I just find it interesting that of all places, I got asked out at a gas station. Who would have figured? It turns out that you can find interested parties in some of the most mundane places. According to a recent CNN article, there was a study of the postings done to the Craigslist &amp;quot;Missed Connections&amp;quot; site (if you&amp;#039;re not familiar, &amp;quot;Missed Connections&amp;quot; is for people who are trying to connect with a stranger that they found attractive, in the hopes that the stranger will read their post and reach back). It turns out the most popular placed to find someone to feel that attraction was - of all places - Wal-Mart. There were geographical differences, of course. In New York, the subway was popular, and in California, it was the gym. But here&amp;#039;s the part of the article that really made me want to lose all hope for myself - the age demographic breakdown:  &amp;quot;The most common place for missed connections for 20-somethings was an ice cream store. At 30, it was a bar, and for people over 40, it was a strip club or adult bookstore.&amp;quot; Now I feel decidedly ill. Well, I guess I&amp;#039;ll keep shopping at Wal-Mart and hope for the best. Did you ever meet someone you dated at an ordinary sort of place? How did you end up connecting? "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.womansday.com/relationships/dating-marriage/a46663/my-already-bleak-outlook/>