Few park visitors are aware of this isolated spot’s existence, making it perfect for contemplative communication with nature or, in my case, falling in love.

When a rustle of movement caused me to turn around, I saw her duck under a low-hanging branch, straighten up, then freeze upon noticing me.

“Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean to intrude.”

The left/right dart of her eyes indicated a sensible wariness. Was I dangerous? Was anyone else around? Should she run?

“No intrusion at all. I’m done with lunch and was about to leave anyway,” I said, holding up a crumpled paper bag as if she might ask for proof.

I’ll never know if it was my demeanor or words that convinced her of my harmlessness, but she approached the wood-slat bench and sat at the other end, simultaneously shifting a tiny backpack from her shoulders to her lap.

I had all but promised to leave, and would have done so had she not immediately engaged me in conversation.

“I went looking for a quiet place along the creek bank to eat my sandwich and read for an hour, but between picnickers, screaming kids and Frisbee dogs, there wasn’t one. And by the time I found the quiet, I’d lost the creek!”

I assured her she had not lost the creek, but that the creek had callously abandoned her. If few people know of this location’s existence, even fewer are aware of the geological oddity that forms the creek’s terminus. As I pointed toward the concealed, rock-rimmed opening ten yards away that drew the waters down into the earth, my bench mate pulled a paperback book and a wrapped sandwich from her backpack.

“Are you some kind of geologist?” she asked, before biting off the corner of a neatly cut, triangular half of what looked like a PB&J on white bread.

She didn’t seem to be in a hurry for me to leave and, by then, I had no inclination to do so. As if this were a first date, we began to exchange superficial personal details, but effortlessly, unlike any date I’d ever had.

Amy/Brandon. Thirty-two/forty-five. Divorced/single. Sagittarius/not a clue.

That made her laugh, and she insisted on knowing my birthdate.

“You, sir, are a Capricorn. Goal-oriented, but unforgiving, while my Sagittarianism demands I be spontaneous, but flighty.”

Her playful tone made it clear she did not take our celestial profiles too seriously. Amy then brought us to the inevitable topic of our occupations, a subject I dreaded.

Pediatric neurosurgical nurse/hunter of discrepants.

Why did I say such a stupid thing? It hadn’t dazzled the ladies at parties, in bars, or at the gym when I was in my twenties, so what made me think it would work in my forties? Calling myself a hunter was practically the definition of putting lipstick on a pig. There is no way to describe my job without inducing somnambulance in a potential partner.

Out of social politeness, the woman always asks what a discrepant is, but sixty seconds into my explanation, she will suddenly excuse herself to go to the ladies’ room or wave to a non-existent friend across the floor, then flee my pedantry and disappear into the crowd. On cue, Amy asked.

“What’s a discrepant?”

I slipped the metaphorical rope around my neck, preparing to once again hang myself.

“It’s the term used in math and quantum physics to describe something that doesn’t fit the norm. A discrepant can range from contradictory to mutually exclusive to impossible.”

Tightening the noose in preparation for the trap door to swing open under my feet, I explained that I, and others like me, searched for previously unidentified discrepants, so theories and potential explanations about their existence could be formed and subjected to scientific analysis.

At that point, I would usually site as an example the quantum leap, because it is one of the few physics term most people have ever heard of.  Simplified, it means a seemingly impossible “jump” of an electron from its own orbit around an atom’s proton-packed center to a completely different orbit without any time passing and without physically traversing the space in between the two circular paths. Dropping the names of physics rock stars like Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr guaranteed the trap door release would spring open.

Boing! Thunk! Gack!