y’all and your lyric stealing whooshes.
On the one hand, damn, I got whooshed.
On the other hand, I’m pretty sure the fact that that song isn’t taking up my mental real estate is a net win for me. 
I met my first girlfriend as a sophomore in a Catholic HS. That was 1984. We dated for a few months. Haven’t seen her since.
A few months ago she contacted me on FB. She’s now a lesbian and raising goats in rural Tennessee. One of her roommates is a Catholic nun.
Not a Buffet song. It was by one hit wonder Rupert Holmes.
Best experience running into an ex? - Picking up my children for the weekend 
Worst experience running into an ex? - Dropping same children off at the end of the weekend 
I don’t think I’ve ever had a bad experience running into an ex…with most of them, the break up was amicable or eventually was.
However, shortly after moving to Tennessee, I sat in on a gig in an Irish pub one St. Pat’s and who should show up but the first guy that I ever lived with…four hundred miles from where we used to live. He was with a couple of other guys and made a big show of trying to pick up one of the Vandy students all night long (and I might add, at the time, he was almost old enough to be her father). He did make one request to the band, but other than that, he pretty much pretended to ignore me.
I would have to call that one the strangest.
It was somewhere in a fairy tale. I used to take her home in my car. We learned about love in the back of a Dodge, a lesson that had gone too far. (Lesson: Stay the hell outta Dodge, I guess.)
It was doomed from the start. You see, she was gonna be an actress, and I was gonna learn to fly. She took off for the footlights. I took off for the sky.
A few years later…
It was raining hard in 'Frisco. I needed one more fare to make my night. This bedraggled looking b*h is in this soggy gown, gets in my cab. I know her, but she fakes it like she doesn’t know me. Whore, I think to myself. Ct. It took a while, but she looked in the mirror and she glanced at the license for my name.
There was not much more for us to talk about. Whatever we had once was gone. At least I got a 20 out of the deal, a lot for $2.50 fare in those days. But now she’s off acting happy at 15 Parkside Lane, and I’m gettin’ stoned. De Niro kinda played me in a movie once.
I can’t really say, because I never saw her again.
She had taken my hand and then led me along a golden beach; we watched the waves tumble over the sand. We drove for miles and miles up some twisting turning roads; it just seemed higher and higher and higher we climbed.
Night after night, day after day, it went on and on. And then came the morning I woke up alone. I spent all night staring down at the lights of LA; wondering if I could ever go home…
Ditto^2.
(And are all these not-actually-stories-but-song-lyrics ones mildly annoying anyone else?)
Add one to the annoyed column.
i’m not annoyed more as disappointed. we took the time to share our real stories - others just default to being “witty” and end up “twitty” instead.
I don’t think I’ve ever had an uncomfortable encounter with an ex but it was strange meeting my ex-husband’s new wife. I was opening up a bank account and I noticed the lady helping me had the same last name as me. We put two and two together and suddenly realized who the other person was. She was a very sweet person and I hope they’re quite happy together. She did ask why we broke up. I didn’t want to say anything negative to the person about to handle my finances so I just blew it off with something like “eh we were young and foolish, it just wasn’t meant to be”.
Aw, I thought The Dope would be big enough for both kinds of answers. I enjoyed reading them all. Anyway, when I’m only deemed “mildly annoying” I consider that a good day.
OK, my best “running into an ex” story: My high school girlfriend and I managed to last into college, but unfortunately it was two separate colleges a couple hours apart. The distance and the changes in our lives kind of wore on us until the following summer, when we were back together at our respective homes. She was moody and hard to please and I was in no mood to try to please, and felt like she thought I wasn’t worth the trouble, but I was young and stupid and stubborn and couldn’t imagine life without her.
We were supposed to meet at a friend’s house for a party at an appointed time. She was late and it kind of irked me.
Enter an old girlfriend I call “Jill,” because that was her name. She pulls up in a recently purchased used Alfa Spider and I am in looooooove … with her car. Jill was nice and fun and good looking, but we were too different and I was never really all that interested in rekindling anything and I’m 88 percent sure she felt the same.
She offered to take me and a friend for a ride in it and we jumped at the chance. Then she let my friend drive it. And finally, I got a turn.
So I said, “Well, I’ll drive it from here straight back to the party.” So we pull up to the party and guess who sees me driving my old girlfriend’s new Alfa with my old girlfriend by my side? She was none too happy. But I was delighted to see that I could make her jealous.
Yeah, that relationship didn’t last too much longer.
Maybe if half of them didn’t appear completely legitimate so long as you don’t know the reference well, which a lot of us probably won’t. Also, it’s the kind of thing that’s sort of funny the first time, and progressively less so every subsequent time.