ghosts

Whenever I am driving late at night, on empty roads, somewhere in the back of my mind I am constantly anticipating a car to manifest out of thin air and blind-side me. This may seem bizarre, but after this weekend it is beginning to make some sense...

First, a brief sampling of past "what the f*** just happened?" collisions: Once upon a time, between the ages of 8-12, I was running toward my dad in a shopping center [typical Jersey strip mall] and somehow ended up running face-first into a large, brick column. Fast forward to the age of 22, I am visiting Amara at Cornell and we are walking along the side-walk either to or from the bar and low and behold a parking meter appears out of nowhere and I end up speed-walking into it with my face. And now let's recall this past weekend's wreckage...

Amara and I woke up around 8:40 on Saturday morning, parched and sloth-like. Amara proceeded to get ready for her Zumba class and I opted to stay in bed and be useless until she returned to pick me up for breakfast. Shortly after noon, Amara texted me to tell me she was on her way home; this was obviously my cue to get up and get dressed so we can get some grub, I obviously stayed in bed until my cousin was physically in the apartment asking me if I was ready. I not-so-quickly zipped up my 20-eyelet Charles David boots, paired with my two inches too short yoga pants, checked my hair [which was moderately disheveled, but I determined it to be acceptable], threw on my coat, and we were on our way to Mugshots.

I had just finished ordering my sandwich and fumbling around with the diverse drink selection when someone behind me said, "Hi Miriam". I turned around, and there was Yance [name modified to protect the awful], in all of his typical, ridiculous flair, and of course some female of Asian descent. I mean really- who wears a top hat? Get out of here. Anyways, I exchanged a hollow and unenthused "... hi ...", followed by, "Why does this need to be what I am beginning my day with?" The four of us then stood there, averting eye contact, for what was likely to be 4-5 looong, silent seconds before Amara suggested, aloud, that we should stand elsewhere, and so we walked off, without another word. When we turned around a few moments later, they had vanished.

The following twenty minutes were spent hypothesizing other reactions to my first Yance sighting since the summer of 2010, when he mistook me for a prostitute on my 27th birthday:

• "For future reference, you don't need to bother saying hi."
• "How could you possibly think anything positive would have come of this?"
• "Nice top hat."
• "WHY iS THiS HAPPENiNG TO MEEE???" [very loudly & slowly. totally super-dramatic]

There were some other gems, but I cannot recall them right now. What is important to ponder here is HOW and WHY did that happen? As far as I know, that fool does not live in Philly, and furthermore, what are the odds that he would happened to walk into the exact same sandwich shoppe, out of all of the sandwich shops & eateries, in the entire city of Philadelphia, at the exact same time that I was there. BOOM! Blind-sided.