How I'll meet your father

My parents met in South America. Both were university graduates, working in completely different fields, who just happened to be in Arrequipa simultaneously. My dad wasn’t even meant to stay for all that long- he was meant to fix a problem then leave; six weeks, no more.

It was two years when he finally returned.

I have no idea after what amount of time he met my mother, it may well have been within those first six weeks, but in my mind it was at least half a year in to his seemingly unending sojourn. I love the arbitrarity of it- how easily they could not have met, how close I came to never existing.

This is partly why I want to meet someone in Australia- I want a great story, like my parents. And, let’s be honest, even if I meet him at a bus spotting convention held in a public library, it’ll be a great story simply because it was filmed on location on the other side of the world to where all my previous anecdotes had transpired.         

And I REALLY want to meet someone. All my female friends are sure I will; the phrase ‘aussie hunk’ has been bandied around, no doubt fuelled by Neighbors and its endless parade of speedo clad beefcake. I won’t pretend I’d say ‘ no’ if I were offered. Let’s be honest, I’d gorge myself on that beefcake.

The problem is, I think I’m expecting to meet someone, as though it were a god-given right. Sadly, I felt the same coming to uni in Edinburgh, and look how that turned out. It’s not good because it means my year will probably be a disappointment in at least one aspect, because unless I literally meet the love of my life down there, it won’t match up to the portent I’ve granted it. And the whole thing of my story beginning in the Amazon (well, technically in Peru, but can’t I have a little dramatization?) because, now, in my head, that’s what my family does. We find love in the exotic locales of the world. Nevermind that my sister met her current squeeze in Nottingham, nor that my maternal grandparents found each other in the village where Balley Kiss Angel was set.

Alack.

Of course, another reason I’d love to meet someone in Australia is that it would blow my sister’s story out of the water and automatically make me the most interesting person in my family. And it would be so romantic because I’d have a lover on the other side of the world and we’d skype all the time in fourth year and it’d be a relief from all the studying and I’d get to say my antipodean paramour because I’m pretentious like that and then I’d move back to Oz once I’d graduated and we’d live together and have so many wild adventures and then we’d get adopt a baby which I’m not sure is legal over there and then we’d get married which I’m certain is not. But we wouldn’t just stay in Australia, oh no, we’d live all over the world and I’d visit Arrequipa and find that it wasn’t quite as romantic as the public library of Wangabanga and then when I died everyone would reflect on my life and be all ‘goddamn but that man was interesting’.

Is that so much to ask?