Lunchtime encounters…

At lunchtime today, I went over to my local REI to get some essentials for everyday life (Gu), and I had the strangest encounters. In the store I saw two friends who I hadn’t seen for quite sometime and I got quite opposite reactions.

When I walked in the store I was greeted by a hearty “Hey Steve” and my first encounter came up to me shook hands and then hugged me like a long lost brother. Now you know, we Brits do not do this hugging thing very well, particularly between the male of the species, but that was all right; it was good to see him and we chatted for a while and all was well with the world.

Then I walked to the back of the store and saw my other friend, who I called out to – “Hey Jim!” (Name changed to protect the identity). He didn’t respond, so I called out again, and this time he did look at me and I said hello again, but again no reaction. So I said, “Jim, it is Jim isn’t it?” and he looked at me blankly and said “No”. On that I moved on. Now, I would normally assume that I had made a mistake, there are indeed people that look similar out there, but no I couldn’t have, Jim has a distinctive car which just happened to be in the parking lot, and there is just no way it was not him.

So I was left wondering what on earth is going on with the world. How could I bump into the extremes of friends within 5 minutes of each other? Even with the hugging (full frontal might I add, we Brits do better with a side on hug sometimes) I preferred the first encounter and was just baffled and troubled by the second.