Just following my mom's memorial, I'm in the reception area as people are filtering into the room and who should come up to me but this guy I dated for about a year when I was 21.
For a split second,as he came towards me, I dissociated and was confused about where I was.
What is HE doing here? I thought to myself, my brain calculations speeding up.
"J. Wow. What are you doing here?" I heard myself saying in a way that sounded very far away all the while still feeling confused, like I was double-checking (no pun intended given his last name which I will refrain from using) whether I really was where I thought I was.
"Well, you know, you've heard of wedding crashers? I thought I'd try funeral crashing!" he said.
I laughed, a barely audible one syllable laugh, and then continued to just stare at him, not saying a thing.
After a minute, probably less, I literally walked away from him without even saying anything. It was just like, okay, can't process this baby! Next!
So, a couple of days pass and I think, that was a tad rude of me. Besides, my curiosity got the best of me. I look him up in the phone book and leave a message apologizing for being what must have seemed rude, not that such behaviour would be out of the ordinary for me with some of the men I've known. Not that their idiocy hasn't warranted such rudeness at times.
He calls me back. We get together for a coffee.
Just as our meeting is coming to an end, he says to me, "So, you never asked me how I ended up at your mom's thing?"
Well, I guess you saw the obit in the paper, I say.
"Actually, I was lying awake at 1:00 am one night and I thought to myself, I should Google Gayle Mavor. Your mom's obit came up. I realized that she'd just died. I debated whether to show up and I thought, what the heck, so I did."
I found this explanation very amusing, mainly because who admits such a thing and secondly because it's just another reminder about why you should never assume the reasons behind why anyone does anything.
How did anyone ever look up their past before Google? At least 40% of the search engine traffic must consist of people looking up people from their past. Unrequited loves. Ex husbands and wives. The ones they used to work for. The ones they had an affair with. Former employers. Future employees. You name it! It's dangerous. Especially when so many people have the same names. There's a young American woman with my name. She talks about things that I don't want people to think I talk about on teen sites that I don't want anyone to think I visit.
I then say to him, "So do you recall our last interaction?"
"You called me one friday night and said, "Hi, I'm just flipping through my address book and I came across your name and I thought I'd call you." This was after I hadn't spoken to him in a very long time.
I responded, at the time, with four curt words: "Well, take it out!" [my name that is...referring to its location in his address book].
That's all I said before the conversation, as would be appropriate, ended. And that was about a decade ago.
I believe it was 1998 and I was going through a particularly difficult time then. I'll throw that in as a feeble excuse although, in hindsight, even I amaze (and amuse) myself.
"Ah, yes," he said laughing, "but I can distinguish between real anger and personality."
(Not with 100% accuracy I thought to myself)
But, that statement did remind me of one of his redeeming features. He was really funny! (albeit in a really warped kind of way!)