Sunday 13th April 2008
I was in a bit of a hurry for the train on Thursday morning. Living near the station has the disadvantage that you imagine you can make it to the platform, ticket in hand, almost instantaneously which, by the way, you can’t. The limiting factor isn’t so much the laws of physics and all of Einstein’s ‘you can’t travel faster than the speed of light in vacuum’ crap—it’s the stupid ticket machines which insist on printing your ticket at the speed of a beam of light superglued to the front of a First Great Western train.
The drudge of buying a ticket was made slightly more exciting by a flash of ginger hair to my right. As I waited the mini-eternity for my two-part return to Didcot to print, I realised that I thought I knew the girl stood at the ticket machine next to me. She looked rather like a girl who was in the year above me at school and whom I can’t have seen for a good…hmm…five or six intervening years?
I wasn’t 100% sure, however, and she was with some dark-haired man, and I had a train to catch. I hurried onto the platform, and met my co-commuter, a post-doc who works in my office.
The girl followed me onto the platform. I tried to snatch glances at her without arousing the suspicion of my friend, with whom I was having a conversation, or any security types who might think my flitting, paranoid eyes were a sure indication that I was a terrorist, an assassin or a suicide risk. I wasn’t sure she was the right girl. She had curlier hair than I remembered, and was wearing glasses I didn’t recognise. I suppose it is possible that she has had a perm and got some new glasses in the five or six intervening years, but I didn’t want to look an idiot in front of my friend (or this pretty girl) by walking up to some poor sod who didn’t know me and asking her if she did.
Then, things hotted up: she got on the same train as us. It didn’t quite go as smoothly as I might have hoped; she was closer to the next carriage along and didn’t get on with us. The commute was unspectacular—no Americans this time. The moment had probably been lost through my shyness and hesitation. Bah. Story of my fucking life.
Then she got off at Didcot. But, for all those crappy excuses about post-docs, my idiocy and moments having been lost, I didn’t go up to her and resolve the situation. She didn’t then catch the same bus as me—which goes to the particle accelerator, so perhaps it wasn’t that surprising—and the series of coincidences came crashing to a tedious conclusion.
I vaguely thought to myself that perhaps I should try to e-mail the girl I thought she was and make contact…but how would you do that? I had blown my chance. Imagine the four options:
- You ask the girl at the station if she’s girl x from your schooldays. ‘Why, yes!’ she exclaims, embracing you, ‘How have you been all these five or six intervening years, my darling Statto? I like the beard. You look much less of a twat than you did at school.’
- You ask the girl at the station if she’s girl x from your schooldays. ‘No, sorry,’ she explains, ‘You must have mistaken me for someone else.’ You agree, a little sheepishly, apologise for the confusion and get on with your day.
- You failed to ask the girl at the station if she’s girl x from your schooldays, so you e-mail girl x. You agonise for three hours over the wording to avoid sounding like an idiot, and eventually compose something half-way decent. ‘Why didn’t you come up to me at the station, you antisocial bastard?!’ she replies, ‘And how did you fail to recognise me? I will never be your friend again.’
- You failed to ask the girl at the station if she’s girl x from your schooldays, so you e-mail girl x. ‘No, you idiot, it wasn’t me!’ she replies, ‘Have you forgotten what I look like? I will never be your friend again.’
Not only is the humiliation twice that of the conversation, but there’s also a permanent record of it stored on a server somewhere to taunt you until a solar flare wipes all the hard disks in the World, which is a long shot as an escape route from a socially awkward situation.
A combination of disorganisation and trains of thought like the above meant that I left the line of enquiry fallow. So, here’s the scary part: she was on the train back from Didcot on Friday afternoon. Her being on the train is even worse; not only would I look an idiot in front of my friend (and her), but also the whole carriage if I were wrong. ‘Tch. He doesn’t know her, but he thought she did,’ they would think, ‘Let us make him the social pariah of this carriage.’
Worse still, she was sat behind me so the snatched glances required a full-blown body twist for maximum subtlety. I was pretty sure I got a couple of snatched glances back from her, but by now I’d been watching her for two days straight, and I wasn’t sure if they were from mutual recognition or fear.
I bit the bullet and e-mailed the girl I thought it was tonight.
I’m praying for a solar flare.
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Tom F says
07:17:21 17/04/2008
You forgot the optimistic option...
5. You ask the girl at the station if she’s girl x from your schooldays. ‘Why, yes!’ she exclaims, slapping you hard across the face. ‘How have you been all these five or six intervening *years*, you uncommunicative git? And what the hell is with the beard? You were such a twat in school, and then you didn't talk to me for six years. Bastard.’ She then walks off with an air of disdain, and the dark-haired man gestures threateningly at you. You then have to pay to upgrade your ticket to first class, just to be safe.
The only saving grace in the situation is that the girl actually turns out to be a terrorist and kills you both in a huge fireball about 2 miles outside of Didcot, rescuing you from the painful embarrassment of the whole social snafu.