Sea of Madness

I remember when I was in 3rd grade I ran into my teacher at the time in public once. It was awkward for both parties.

These moments continue to happen though...and they're no less awkward.



The impetus for this post occurred recently. I had gone to see a movie with my brother and ran into a guy I knew from my local pickup basketball game at the gym. We said hello and moved on our ways, but it was still a bit off. Part of me wanted to ask him, "So, you don't wear mesh shorts and sweat profusely all the time?"

Also, I'm confident the other guy has not thought twice about the encounter since it took place, and I'm not sure if he enjoyed "Bruno" though Harold Ramis* was in our theater and I overheard him saying "It was funny."

*An oversized man with a smaller fro walked into the theater and from the second to top row, my brother says "Looks like Ramis," and we shared a laugh. I went to the bathroom before the movie started and who walks out of the theater still putting his pants back on? You guessed it- Egan himself.

But back to the guy from the gym. Is there ever an non-awkward encounter between somebody you only see in one setting? I remember seeing my freshmen year high school english teacher at the taste of Chicago that summer. She had a sizable stack of beer cups. Needless to say, this was only awkward for her.

There were kids I knew in junior high exclusively from running into them on Friday nights at Northbrook court. That wasn't weird. It was weird when I stopped running into them and they still wanted to be friends.

I worked at a camp one summer. All we did was talk about how much we hated it. We all came back the next summer. Whenever I ran into these people, all we knew how to talk about was camp. or how bad the food was at the camp. We needed the camp. So predictably, when I stopped working there, I only kept in touch with my boss (who also left) and when I ran into the owner he called me Mr. Cooper (and I'm assuming this wasn't a Mark Curry reference....as much as I wanted it to be).

And yet none of this was even half as strange as when I ran into a girl from a few posts back. You can refresh your memory here. The abridged version, if you dont recall, is my brother ran into a some one who he didn't know, but apparently she knew me (even if I had to pull out the yearbook when I heard her name). She told my brother I was a f*cking asshole and I was rude to her in college but we didn't go to the same schools. Outstanding.

Fast forward to last Thursday. I'm at the Cubby Bear North (where I ran in to more people from the gym, and these people are only in town for a few weeks doing business training! What are the odds?). Sitting down talking to some people and who's looking at me from across the deck? The girl. So naturally, after making eye contact with her, I laughed for like 10 seconds and said nothing to her the rest of the evening.

If she wants to think I'm an asshole, I might as well try to give her a reason to think that way.

I'm reading: Sea of MadnessTweet this!