Do I Know You?
by Adam Magnusson
17 October 2004
The other morning I got up early and decided to go out to my local café for coffee instead of making it myself. I had been working a lot of hours recently and thought that I would take an hour of me time to read and relax and just have some down time.
Ahhhh, the best laid plans.
So, I get my coffee, find a table, smile and nod at a pretty girl whose eye I happened to catch and then opened my book and started to read. For those of you out there who read and are curious, I was reading the newest Tom Robbins book. So, I sit and read and read and relax and read and stop to change music and that’s when the fun begins.
I just figure out what I want to listen to when I am approached by an older gentleman. Best guess would put this man at approximately 70 years old. He comes up to me and uses one of the DUMBEST lines ever when approaching a stranger, “Excuse me, but do I know you?”
First, the line; have you ever heard that? Of course you have, I think everyone has heard that at least once in their life. Do I know you? How the hell do I know who you know! Sorry, I missed the memo on your life and who was in it. Let me check my fax machine as soon as I get home. Why not ask me if you’re happy or if your wife is fooling around on you… I’m pretty sure that I won’t know the answers to those questions either. I think that in the future, when I am feeling mean spirited, I am going to walk down the street and ask random strangers, “Excuse me, is this my car?”
Well, back to the old man. I explain that I am not and pick-up my book to start reading again when the guy sits down at my table. Uninvited. Just sits and looks at me. I wanted to yell and tell this guy to perform impossible masturbatory acts on himself, but as I said, I was in a good mood and having a good mood kind of day. So, calm as I can I say, “Sir, really, I don’t know you and I am rather busy so if you will please excuse me.” It doesn’t work. Not only does it not work, as soon as I run that sentence together this old guy’s face lights up and he calls me Ralphie Rangtell or Ringtell maybe. I explain that I am not Ralphie, nor do I know anyone named Ralphie and this guy just kind of chuckles.
Now, I am willing to admit that I could have been sitting with a crazy guy, but this guy had been around a few times and this was the first time that I had seen him act crazy in any form. So, he sits at my table, laughing to me or himself or whomever and I wonder if I will have to get up and leave the café just so that I can get some reading done. Unknown guy then proceeds to say, “Ralphie… that’s funny, you trying to fool me, but I never forget a student.”
Maybe he doesn’t ever forget a student, but it seems that he’s even better at inventing students. I calmly explain, again, that my name isn’t Ralphie and on top of that, I didn’t go to school in CA, so chances are pretty good that he has me mistaken and that I was never a student of his.
“Sure you were. Class of ‘89. You’re Ralphie and you were in my English sections and my Drama class. Remember the monologue I had you read from ‘Taming of the Shrew’?” Crazy seems about right. In 1989 I was 12. Seeing as my name is NOT Doogie Howser, I really don’t think that I was in this guy’s English or Drama class. And I was having such a good morning.
So, I start to pack up and I tell guy again that I am not who he thinks I am and if he’ll just excuse me…
With that I turn and leave. A half block later, here comes Mr. Man, shouting after me as I walk up the block. What the hell is this? Can I please wake up now? Stuff like this happens in bad movies, not in real life.
I start walking faster, hoping that Old Man is not so fleet of foot, but he keeps right up and keeps talking at me. By now I’m worried. I can’t go back to my place, otherwise Walker McTalker will know where I live and that is most assuredly non-kosher. I’m about to break into a run and just hope that I can outlast the guy (I am wearing a backpack and boots, blue jeans and a light long sleeved shirt, Walker McTalker is in shorts and running shoes) when I see salvation in the flesh coming my way.
Not police, Christian Scientists. So, I slow up and ready myself to engage in conversation when my old Christian Scientist friend Clip-On Tie Guy recognizes me. A brief background on this real quick; When the CS (Christian Scientist) moved into the neighborhood, they set up shop and started sending people onto the streets to convert the peoples or whatever it is that the CS folk do. Well, on numerous occasions, I had run ins with my old pal Clip-On Tie Guy. I call him that because he ALWAYS wears a clip-on tie. One day after I had politely declined him and asked him to stop harassing me, he got in my face again. At this point, I lost it. I told him to look at me and remember my face, because if he ever spoke to me again, I would yank off his stupid tie and bring it home with me as a trophy, if I decided not to play fetch with him by flinging it into traffic. Needless to say, my threats worked and Clip-On Tie and his crew have left me in peace and silence.
I can see the fear in Clip-On Tie Guy’s eyes. He knows I am going to speak. He feels it. I can only imagine what good ol’ Clip-On was thinking, when Clip-On takes the lead, steps around me and into the path of Walker McTalker. Clip-On and his band of Christian Scientific Merry Men and Woman start their spiel on Walker and he stops to listen, saying, “I’ll catch up with you Ralphie.”
Off I go to the home where I hid under my bed for the rest of the day in fear of Walker McTalker coming to see me. I saw both Clip-On and Walker the other day and it was incident free. Clip-On Tie Guy won’t look me in the eye and Walker doesn’t seem to know who I am anymore. I almost feel bad for both of them, but then again, after being harassed by one and stalked (short distance) by the other, I don’t feel all that bad. If all mornings could be this interesting, I’d go out for coffee more often.
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