In the movie Fight Club, Edward Norton’s character first meets Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) on an airplane in what he explains is a “single serving friend” relationship. Basically it likens the whole idea of striking up friendly banter and interaction with people you will never see again to a ketchup packet or the shampoo offerings in a hotel room. One shot and it’s over.

Single Servings are the essential building blocks of mommy groups which grow into the child’s version of a one night stand – the play date – with the potential to make companions out of women who wouldn’t have a thing to say to each other sans children.

A lesser version of this is the drive-by. Like the young man at the Holiday Inn Express Sunday morning who, after eavesdropping on a rather mundane conversation between Rob and myself on preparing Quaker Instant Oats, happily inserted himself into the discussion and gave us incorrect directions.

And there was the woman at the rest stop outside Moorhead, MN who began chatting with me in the washroom. Chattering away at my back really because I didn’t make eye contact or anything until I realized that she wasn’t talking to the hand dryer. She proceeded to talk mostly at me on and off for the next 15 minutes while Rob and I walked around the playground where Katy and her little girl were playing and as he and I chatted with each other in the picnic area.

“She might have been a widow, you know,” Rob pointed out later. “Traveling alone with a child and all.”

That thought had occurred to me back in the washroom but not because she was a woman who appeared to be on her own. It was the conversation she was having with her daughter as they walked in.

“…there are bad people in the world just waiting to hurt little boys and girls who wander away from their moms.”

I was just glad at that moment that Katy was dancing around the stall and didn’t hear her. I didn’t want to be in a position of refuting another parent’s right to go over the top with a stranger danger lecture within their earshot.

Not that all widowed/divorced/or simply single moms are paranoid. That could just have been me. Still is me. I am hardly unique.

When she and her daughter took their leave she said good-bye to Katy and called out the same to Rob and I as we canoodled in the picnic shelter. We can’t be in public without touching. It just wouldn’t be us.

“Are you going to mention that we were making out like crazy?” he asked as I began writing this.

“No, because we weren’t,” I replied. “Should I though?”

“Well, it would titillate your readers.”

Since some of my readers are also bloggers who write things that need disclaimers, I doubted that highly. Now if we’d been el fresco on the picnic table, it would have merited a description. Besides, this post was supposed to be about those people you meet on trips, interact with – willingly or not so, and never see again but make wonderful blog filler.

*I didn’t get a prompt from Julie Pippert this week, so if you have a single serving acquaintance tale to tell link it or use the comment box.