Chance Encounter

Sometimes, it comes down to a simple hello. Or not.

I was in the produce aisle when I saw a woman I knew from high school.

We hadn’t been friends, but when we were in our twenties I sat next to her at a wedding and found her surprisingly funny and interesting. In high school I assumed she was a vapid cheerleader and she assumed I was a weirdo theater geek, so our social paths were not merely never crossed, but mutually contemptuous.

No longer was she blond, but gray, no longer kilted, but yoga-pantsed, but there was no doubt it was her.

Hello is no big deal, right? But I was in a rush and my dirty hair was jammed into a beanie and I was wearing what are apparently no longer fashionable skinny jeans. Hello is simple enough, but what if she didn’t recognize me? Hello is easy, but what next? What would we even say to each other, two people with nothing in common but this mundane, random intersection in time and space?

But there was that one time years ago when we sat together and she was funny and interesting, and hello would have been nice, but she turned the corner and I wasn’t about to chase her down. I figured she’d already put me through enough.