The Plan

I have made a lot of crazy decisions in my life. Putting my phone number all over King Street in Old Town Alexandria just might top the list! (If you want to know how I got to this point, check out my Back Story.)

A few days after walking out of the bar and not getting Ben's number or making a move, I started thinking about my options.

A) Get over it and move on.
B) Do what other people do and post on Craigslist Missed Connections and then get over it.
C) Go back to the bar the next week on the same night to see if he's a regular. And then get over it.
Plan C was a dead end. Enter my crazy Plan D- a sign!

Here was my Plan D:
1) Write up a sign. Keep it simple, but make it slightly vague so randos wouldn’t be able to say they’re Ben without some kind of proof.

2) Make copies and tape them up in Old Town Alexandria the afternoon of Dec. 31. I knew this would be the most effective day because thousands of people would be in Old Town celebrating New Years Eve. In fact, the Washington Post billed it as one of the best places in the area to spend NYE. Perfect, the sign will surely be seen then!
3) Prepare for the incoming deluge of calls and texts I was about to get flooded with! The plan was to send all calls to voicemail and listen to all of them. Text messages would get a response stating that this was real and I was still looking for Ben.

On NYE, my friend Jennifer helped me post the signs all along King St. It took about 40 minutes to tape them up on both sides of the road. We strategically placed them near every pay-for-parking station and lots in front of the Light Horse where I had met Ben.

Within 20 minutes of starting, I was getting my first phone calls and text messages. I directed everything to voicemail as planned. In that first hour we decided on a hashtag so we could follow the story on social media, hence #FindBen.

We watched Instagram and Twitter first. That’s where we were going to be able to see the pictures spread. I reached out to local bloggers Scott and Al from In a DC Minute and told them that I was the Courtney who was looking for Ben. I let them know that it was a real story, not an internet hoax, like so many of these things turn out to be.

I truly was looking for a good looking guy who really knocked my socks off… and that I chickened out to do anything about.

Within the first hour I had gotten a couple dozen calls and texts. I created an Old Town Courtney Twitter account. It was going to be the fastest and easiest way to watch one sheet of paper and a sharpie grow into something bigger than I even imagined.

My friends and I went out for NYE in Old Town and kept our eyes open for Ben. Everywhere we walked people were looking at the sign, taking pictures of it, texting me for a description so they could keep their eyes open for him and calling me as I stood right next to them
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The entire city of Alexandria was on the hunt for Ben with me and it was amazing! I couldn’t believe how many people called and text in that first day wishing me well.

From about 2 p.m. on the 31^st until I went to bed after the New Year, I had at least a hundred calls and texts. While they were mostly wonderful, positive and uplifting, none of them were from Ben.
Mixed in with the well-wishes, I got calls from local news outlets asking for interviews. I called them back and set up a time on New Year’s Day for an interview if I didn’t find Ben.

After thinking about it a bit, and discussing it with friends and still not hearing from Ben, I decided to do the interview.

That’s when I knew this was really going to go everywhere!

By the time the 4 o’clock news hour came, my story was on Fox News DC. And it re-aired every news cast that evening and the next morning. I knew exactly when it aired on the 1^st, because I would get an onslaught of new calls and texts!  
  By the 2^nd, the story started getting picked up by affiliates all around the country. I could tell which affiliate picked up the story and aired it on their news cast by the incoming calls and area codes. I was still monitoring all the voicemails and responding to all the text messages, but I still hadn’t heard from Ben.

At this point, I had absolutely no idea if I would even hear from him. I kept listening to all of the messages. What if he called and I missed it? Dear god! I couldn’t possibly dork this up again, especially after everything I just put myself through!

Finally a call came in and a message was left. “Hi Courtney. You’re probably screening your calls, but this is Ben.”

Holy crap! Could this be it? Could I have finally found Ben? Time to call him back!