That sounds like the beginning of a slice-of-life movie... Withinboredom and the luggage guy became great pals, travelled the world together, started a business, met their spouses... until something dramatic happened, the link was severed, and now Withinboredom longs for the times they spent together, underlining how fleeting existence is, how every day is precious, etc etc.
Reminiscent of the plot in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lunchbox. A meet-cute with the famous Bombay Dabba-Walas (lunchbox delivery service) accidentally messing up a delivery, and leading to a correspondence and later a meeting between an unhappy housewife and a lonely widower.
OK. That's the second time now. I feel like in the last 48 hours, "meet-cute" or "meetcute" has been introduced as a New Word and everyone got the memo but me.
It’s not new. It’s been a thing in writing about rom
coms since at least the early 90s, if not earlier.
Edit: Wikipedia cites a first usage in print of 1941, which implies it was already a common trope at the time: The earliest example given by the Oxford English Dictionary is from Anthony Boucher's mystery novel The Case of the Solid Key (1941), in which a character says "We met cute, as they say in story conferences."
Also, everyone should watch Roman Holiday because honestly they never needed to make another romcom after that and the meet cute is the sweetest you'll ever see.
But it was largely limited to professional storywriters, Hollywood / Broadway types. The internet spread their lingo much more widely, and terms like that have become more common and fashionable in recent years.
He really does do movies like that, doesn't he? Stuck in the airport in the terminal, stuck on a remote island in castaway, even chasing decaprio in catch me if you can...
