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Some of the best stories happen on planes.
I boarded a cross-Atlantic flight, and somehow, the people in the seating department knew to put the only two orthodox people on the flight together.
I boarded a cross-Atlantic flight, and somehow, the people in the seating department knew to put the only two orthodox people on the flight together.
As I am getting comfortably into my seat, this Lubavitch young man sits down next to me.
I look at him trying to assess his level of frumkeit and to decide whether I should be my warm, friendly, chit-chatty, modern self, or whether I should adapt a frummy, cold, and silent personality.
I figure it’s a long flight and I might as well meet another interesting person from a sect that intrigues me to say the least.
We start talking. He is extremely responsive. Not sure if he talks to girls, or if it’s the “plane heter” to talk to girls… turns out he is engaged.
Bummer. I can't marry him. But at least I can find the secret to true Lubavitch love...
Now that is something that interests me tremendously.
Mazal Tov! How did it happen? I ask. And the young man ever so kindly explains to me that he and his fiancé went on three dates. He proposed on the third.
I: Three dates? That’s quick. At what point did you know that she was THE ONE?
Lub. Guy: From her first sentence. I just knew it.
I: Really?! What did she say?
Lub. Guy: I was searching for her where we were supposed to meet. She spotted me first, came over to me… and, listen carefully, instead of asking “You’re searching for me?” She stated it as a fact “You’re searching for me”. And I realized that, indeed, I was searching for her all this time.
I am sitting there slightly dumbfounded turning the story over in my head and playing out the scenario from various angles: Uhem, you are SEARCHING for me. Or . You are searching for ME. How do you say it in a way that makes a guy flip and fall in love with you?
The rest of the flight we spent discussing random stuff like the Rebbe and his spirit and his army…. But when I was getting off the plane, I smiled at this Hassid and told him that I knew exactly what I was going to say on my next date.
Too bad it didn’t work out for me so well. I can’t really pull it off as elegantly when a guy knocks on my door and I say ever so casually: you are searching for me. Or when I get into a guy’s car… I just don’t see it…
Perhaps, another time, maybe on an Israeli Shidduch Date… where people meet in public places.
