A weekend concerto in three parts: Friday
I started to write about the massive shopping expedition to Costco, but then I realized how fucking inane that would be. Sometimes I need an editor to smack me upside my head to make me remember that I am trying to add to the "dialogue" of the internet, not to crap out mental diarrhea. Let it be noted that I have never seen as much food purchased at one time as I witnessed on Friday. Thank you moms and pops, your contributions to the food orgy that occurred on Sunday have been taken into consideration for retirement home placement.
Really though, let's talk about what a small town DC is. I'm sure that everyone, except for the flood of wide-eyed interns who bum-rushed my metro this morning, has experienced the random encounter with an unexpected acquaintance in this city. You're walking down the street and you see someone who looks familiar, then they turn around, shout your name, and you hold an impromptu exchange of varying awkwardness. I went to a small liberal arts school, and I think that I randomly run into more people here than I did strolling across campus. Chalk it up to the fact that everyone who counts either works or lives in the small corridor stretching from Dupont-Columbia Heights/Cleveland Park. Except for you Wyatt, except for you.
Having lived here all my life, many of my encounters occur with a stunning amount of discomfort since there is always the question of "what's the reason why we see each other anymore" floating above our conversations. Friday night was a prime example of this (and of yet another reason that I fastidiously strive to avoid Adams Morgan).
1. Walking into the Reef, I hand the bouncer my ID. Bouncer looks up, "I know you." I look at the bouncer. I look at him closely. I have no fucking clue. He says "You went to Hardy [Middle School], right?" (for those who care, I'm talking old school Hardy up on Foxhall, not this new place in Glover Park) I look again as my mind races through all of the names that I can recall, desperately trying to find a name and a face that matches. Blank. "Um, yeah," sheepishly "and you are...?" Yup, I definitely went to middle school with him.
2. Sitting in Bedrock Billiards with friends, I notice a guy playing pool across the room. We were in Scouts together (yes, Boy Scouts.), we would smoke in the woods on weekends. What do you do here? a. Pretend you don't see him, b. Go right up, say hi, and try to catch up on the last six years of each others lives, or c. Socialize your way closer and then talk if their is mutual recognition. I went with "c", made easier by the fact that the other half of our party was sitting right next to his table. That also gave me an easy exit when the conversation started to get stilted. He makes robots that detect land mines. I never would have guessed.
3. Walking down Columbia Rd. to get home, I see a former college roommate. Whom I don't know is in DC. You see, he stopped talking to me when I hooked up with a girl that he had a crush on. Actually, he stopped talking to me the night after she talked her way into sleeping in my bed with me, even though I refused to hook up with her because I knew that he would get pissed. In the morning, he threw our trash can across our living room, stopped talking to me, and I started hooking up with the girl. What do you do?
Clearly, there was no choice but to stop and talk, we have too many friends in common still to do otherwise. We made enough pleasant conversation that a total stranger might not realize that we didn't like each other, and then went our separate ways.
What's your strangest DC encounter?
Really though, let's talk about what a small town DC is. I'm sure that everyone, except for the flood of wide-eyed interns who bum-rushed my metro this morning, has experienced the random encounter with an unexpected acquaintance in this city. You're walking down the street and you see someone who looks familiar, then they turn around, shout your name, and you hold an impromptu exchange of varying awkwardness. I went to a small liberal arts school, and I think that I randomly run into more people here than I did strolling across campus. Chalk it up to the fact that everyone who counts either works or lives in the small corridor stretching from Dupont-Columbia Heights/Cleveland Park. Except for you Wyatt, except for you.
Having lived here all my life, many of my encounters occur with a stunning amount of discomfort since there is always the question of "what's the reason why we see each other anymore" floating above our conversations. Friday night was a prime example of this (and of yet another reason that I fastidiously strive to avoid Adams Morgan).
1. Walking into the Reef, I hand the bouncer my ID. Bouncer looks up, "I know you." I look at the bouncer. I look at him closely. I have no fucking clue. He says "You went to Hardy [Middle School], right?" (for those who care, I'm talking old school Hardy up on Foxhall, not this new place in Glover Park) I look again as my mind races through all of the names that I can recall, desperately trying to find a name and a face that matches. Blank. "Um, yeah," sheepishly "and you are...?" Yup, I definitely went to middle school with him.
2. Sitting in Bedrock Billiards with friends, I notice a guy playing pool across the room. We were in Scouts together (yes, Boy Scouts.), we would smoke in the woods on weekends. What do you do here? a. Pretend you don't see him, b. Go right up, say hi, and try to catch up on the last six years of each others lives, or c. Socialize your way closer and then talk if their is mutual recognition. I went with "c", made easier by the fact that the other half of our party was sitting right next to his table. That also gave me an easy exit when the conversation started to get stilted. He makes robots that detect land mines. I never would have guessed.
3. Walking down Columbia Rd. to get home, I see a former college roommate. Whom I don't know is in DC. You see, he stopped talking to me when I hooked up with a girl that he had a crush on. Actually, he stopped talking to me the night after she talked her way into sleeping in my bed with me, even though I refused to hook up with her because I knew that he would get pissed. In the morning, he threw our trash can across our living room, stopped talking to me, and I started hooking up with the girl. What do you do?
Clearly, there was no choice but to stop and talk, we have too many friends in common still to do otherwise. We made enough pleasant conversation that a total stranger might not realize that we didn't like each other, and then went our separate ways.
What's your strangest DC encounter?
posted by Fletch at
9:53 AM
1 Comments:
Um, I live in Park Slope. It is impossible to walk down the Avenue on a weekend without running into at least one person I know. On Saturday, in one 5 block (short block jaunt) we ran into one Wes kid, one of Erica's friends and a guy I had met at a party the night before... but the real news in this is that I ran into your new best friend on Sunday. He went to Wesleyan and is moving to Austin with his soon-to-be-wife who is starting a PhD at UT. Email me for details about your new life.
By
Sarah, at 4:31 PM
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