It’s the stuff Mills & Boon books are made of. You get on a flight to Barcelona, a cute guy sitting in front says: ‘Come sit by me, there’s loads of free seats.’ You agree. You talk for hours. It’s like a rom-com. Then you disembark, get to customs, and you’re Canadian so you go join that annoyingly long line for non-EU passport holders. The boy, however, sails through his line in 30 seconds.
When you emerge, you look for him to say goodbye, but can’t find him and you think, ' I would look for him longer, but I don’t want to be a desperado’ so you go on your merry way. Meanwhile, he’s also looking for you and somehow you just can’t find each other.
This happened when Canadian Katie Moreau met 24-year-old Jamie Kelly on a flight from Dublin to Spain last week. Katie had just spent a couple of months in Spain and Italy and was so thrilled to be speaking English that she was quite the chatty Cathy. Whatever they talked about, Jamie was into it.
Although he didn’t have her last name or phone number, and the airline wouldn’t help him, Jamie decided this connection was too great to let go, so he set about finding her via a Twitter campaign, using the hashtag #findkatie and #loveatfirstsight. This is what one may call ‘intense, but sweet’.
He got all his friends to Tweet about her, they did. He phoned an Irish radio station and even Skyped with a TV station in Canada and eventually the pair reconnected. Katie heard about the campaign via her friends back in Canada and said she thought it was quite funny: ‘I find it very humorous because all my friends back home are losing their heads over it,’ she told CBC.
She also acknowledges how hanging around for a few minutes after she got her bag would have been pretty chilled compared to the effort Jamie endured to track her down.
‘I suppose, in hindsight, looking a bit longer wouldn't seem as desperate in comparison,’ she said. Er, yes.
Picture: Facebook
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.