Bumped into my good friend, whats his face, the other day.

I’m standing in the express line at the grocery store the other day counting the number of items the guy in front of me has, sure enough the dirty bastard is a loaf of bread and jar of Miracle Whip over the limit. I’m tempted to bust him for trying to sneak these extra two items past but then I consider the fact that I’m 5 over and keep my mouth shut.

Any way I’m standing there when this guy who I have never seen in my entire life comes up to me and says “Hey John, wow that is you, how have you been”. Now I know a lot of people in this situation get embarrassed that they don’t remember this person and so they will try to pretend they know who he is…..”Oh hey buddy…..how have you been”? So you stand there like an idiot hoping the name will come to you before someone else asks you to introduce them.

Not me, I don’t even care anymore……I’ll ask straight, “Who the hell are you”. The way I see it, if I should know this person I would. It’s not like I’m going to forget someone who actually mattered to me you know? It’s the asshole who you met at a party 5 years ago who you didn’t care to meet then so why should you remember him now? It's this guy who has the ego of a small planet thinking for the past 5 years you've been home waiting for him to call.

I know it may be rude, ok fine it is rude to say “who the hell are you”, but think about it this way. These guys always seem to know way too much about you for the relationship level you previously had. He’s probably some kind of stalker, if you met a guy at a party once and 5 years later he’s asking you if you still work at IBM and still drive a blue Neon, you have cause for concern. “Wow it’s been so long, hey do you still shower with your bathroom curtains open an inch?” So yeah I see no reason to be polite.

In this particular case the guy tells me “We went to high school together”. Now I went to high school with about 500 people. I talked to 50 and liked maybe 10. This guy was definitely not in my circle of friends, yet he’s talking to me like we used to hang out and terrorize the neighborhood together. As he’s talking all I’m thinking is hurry up and ring up my groceries buddy so I can get the hell away from this guy.

To make matters worse he’s one of these guys with no concept of looking presentable in public places. He looks like he may have just woken up, climbed out of which ever dumpster he calls home and stumbled into Safeway looking for abandoned shopping carts so he can scrape together enough quarters for a beer. And he’s standing here talking to me….so people think I’m with him! So I say “Hey it was nice seeing you again and I don’t mean to be rude but could you possibly fuck right off”.

I just have no patience for people. Especially people whose fondest high school memories are of sitting around with friends, talking about the crazy antics of me and my friends. I still love watching other people who are too shy to say anything squirm in these situations. If I see it happening I’ll be the asshole who comes up and says “Hey Adam, who’s your friend”. I also love doing it to people; I don’t even have to actually know them. If I see you wearing a name tag there’s a good chance I’ll approach you….”Hey Greg you old bone smoker….how the hell are you”. I can get guys telling me about their family, their jobs…..if I put on a good enough show I can even get myself invited for dinner, sometimes I’ll even go.

And the worst part about this little adventure of mine in the express lane was that this guy felt the need to point out I was 5 items over the limit. No wonder we weren’t friends in high school.