A RENEWED (awkward) MEETING

Another great day for a walk and a visit with you, my friend.  So many events to be remembered and many to try to forget!  The one I will share with you today is both...................................

Several years ago, before the pandemic, I met two of my colleagues for lunch.  This had become our weekly or bi-monthly time to meet over lunch at the Atlanta Bread Factory and catch up on our now divided lifestyles.  I, being the eldest of the three and having been retired now twenty years, was joined by my recently retired friend and our newly employed friend.  We shared the same experience of either having been or now the director of the Surgical Technology Program at the local community college. In addition to being good friends, we always enjoyed comparing the changes and challenges that each of us had faced in our same chosen career.

So it was, on this particular day when we were engrossed in our conversations regarding the clinical sites, the students, the college in general that I was suddenly approached by another patron of the restaurant.  This new conversation began as:  AP (another patron)

 AP:   My goodness!  It is so wonderful to see you again!

ME: ( looking up and directly into the face of the lady standing over me) Thank you!  It is certainly good to see you again too!

AP:  It is amazing that I ran into you again!  How have you been?

ME: I have been fine, thank you, and you?

AP:  Great!  Thanks!  You are looking so good, you never change!

ME:  I have to say the same for you as well!

AP:  We have all missed you, especially at the bridge-club meetings!  I cannot wait to tell the girls that I ran into you!

ME:  Yes!  Say hello to all from me!

With that, she turned away and moved across the restaurant to her table shared with others.

My friends who had listened quietly to the conversation asked me who that was.  

ME:  I have no idea!  I have never seen her before!

POST SCRIPT;  

I have often asked myself the same question you are now thinking.  Why did I not let the AP know that we did not know each other and that she had made a mistaken identification:  

My answer is that I kept trying to remember her!  As she was talking, I was searching my brain for some lost information.  Was she a childhood friend? Was this a friend in elementary school, high school?  Was she a friend of my older sister and had she confused me with her?  Was she a friend of a friend?  Was she a nurse that I had worked with?

Special note: ( The AP never called the name of the person she supposed I was.)

Unfortunately, by the time I had sorted through all my memory cards in this aging brain, I could not retrieve any information.....................nothing clicked.  At that point, I was too deep into the deception to embarrass the AP and decided to end it as graciously as possible.  

There was, however, convincing evidence at the end of her greeting that confirmed her mistaken identity:  The game of bridge, which neither I nor my sister had ever played!  

Oh, the pondering of it all.........................................................................