richmond_and_chilver raze i was walking on the sidewalk that lines the outside of the park when he drove by with his windows rolled down. it was that kind of day. "hey!" he said. "good to see you in the hood." i waved and said it was good to see him too. he drove away. and i thought, i guess that's dave. he must have shaved off his beard. yeah. that has to be him. i'd know that smiling face anywhere. maybe five minutes later, i saw him standing on his front lawn a few houses down from where i used to live. i've never been to dave's place. come to think of it, i don't know where he lives. but it made sense that he would live here. it's not far from where he works. he was talking to an old man. "this guy'll tell you," he said, looking over at me. "he knows me." "do i dare approach?" "come on over." when i got to where the shitty concrete met the dirt, the face that looked familiar from across the street didn't look so familiar anymore. this wasn't dave. the build was right, and the broad strokes were there, but the fine details were all wrong. this guy was ten years too old to be dave. the nose was a little different. he looked the way dave might look if i saw him in a dream and my brain decided to slack off on filling in his features. "you want some hand san?" he asked. (has this abbreviation of "hand sanitizer" entered the public lexicon? is this what teenagers call the stuff now?) i said sure. we observed our proper social distance. he reached over to squirt some gloop into my hands from a huge blue container. i rubbed it in and thought, i've stepped in it now. i don't know this guy. he doesn't know me. he's one of those friendly nutcases who thinks he knows everyone, and this old guy is too friendly to walk away. "stay away from loud talkers," not-dave said. he was offering me some advice to take with me in this skittish new world. now he had an accent i couldn't place, as if he'd been keeping it in his pocket so it was one more thing i couldn't make out from a distance. he said a few more things to make light of the situation. i said it was good running into him. i crossed back over to the other side of the street and got on with the rest of my walk. as run-ins with strangers who think they know you go, that one was pretty pleasant. i even walked away with cleaner hands. 200405 what's it to you? who go blather from