Single service friends

It's been probably 8 years since the last time I saw Fight Club, but I will always remember the concept of the single serving friend (which over the years I have somehow adapted into calling the single service friend).

We've all had them. The people we meet and with whom we spend anywhere from an hour to a day. We part ways, often knowing the intimate details of each other's lives, yet we know we will never see these people again. It's kind of a crazy concept.

Those of you who know me know that I am pretty unfriendly. I'm generally cold, hard to get to know, and wholly uninterested in other people's lives. Yet I've had some really amazing single service friends in my day. People who I wish I could have gotten to know better, and who I often wonder about - where they are, how the life events they told me about ended up, and whether or not they even remember meeting me. Here are a few:

- I was on the Amtrak from NY to Boston during my freshman year of college. The only available seat was at a table with 3 strangers - 2 guys and 1 girl. We got to talking, and found out that we were all college students (2 Northeastern, 1 BU, and me). We bonded over a box of Krispy Kremes and shared drinking stories and other assorted tales of college debauchery. We all exchanged numbers with the promise to party together soon. We didn't.

- During my semester abroad in Sydney, a friend and I took a 10 day trip to New Zealand. We were staying in a hostel, and the guy on the bed across from me asked me about the book I was reading (no idea what it was). We got in a conversation about philosophy and sociology and life and lord knows what else, and he recommended that I read Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn. As soon as I got home to the U.S., I read it. And its sequel. They were both amazing, and I always wished I had some way of finding that guy so I could thank him and discuss the book with him.

- Over the summer, I was at a bar in NYC with the blogger formerly known as Dan Mega (or I suppose I should say, "the former blogger known as Dan Mega"), who was in town visiting. I didn't know anyone else at the bar, and while he was catching up with a friend I started talking to the girl next to me. Within half an hour we knew each other's life stories and counseled each other on love life problems. We sat on a bench drinking beer, pointing out hotties, and more or less ignoring the people who brought us to the bar in the first place. When I realized I had to get up in 6 hours, I was legitimately sad to say goodbye to my new friend.

- On Friday (clearly the reason why I thought to write this post) I started my job bartending for a catering company. The event had 99 tables, and each table was to have 4 bottles of wine on the table when the guests arrived. As we stood around opening bottle after bottle after motherf'ing bottle to the point where my hand started bleeding all over my corkscrew, I started chatting with the other bartenders. And we kept talking throughout the rest of our shift, interrupted only by moments of frantic drink-making. By the end of the night, one girl (Jess) and I made a promise to go into business together. Another bartender drove us home, and as we got out of the car, Jess and I both wished him a heartfelt goodbye and goodluck, as he's heading off to the army next month. Jess and I then hugged, promised to be in touch, and went our separate ways.

Writing these stories made me think of so many other times I really feel like I connected with someone who I only met once. Anyone else have experiences like these?