March 2003
March 5
Chapel Hill is one of those places where it's not at all uncommon to run into someone who's familiar but you're not quite sure why you think you know the person. I've just been one-half of an incident of this, and the reaction I got when I reintroduced myself to the other person made my day.
Back when I worked at Non-Profit Agency #2, I knew a woman who was a participant in several of the agency's programs. She was by the office several times a month, and we frequently chatted. At that point, we knew each other by name and by sight. Let's call her Jane Doe.
Time passed, of course. She (and everyone else) knew I left the agency to go deal with an ailing mother, but many of the people lost track of me after that point. Jane was one of them.
Once I went to work at the law firm, I saw a woman I was pretty sure was Jane at a distance any number of times---usually en route to or from the communal mailboxes, which let me know she worked somewhere in the complex. But even though we nodded, we never actually got around to speaking till today.
As it happened, I had learned for sure (from a mutual acquaintance) that Jane did have an office in the complex a few weeks ago. So when I saw her heading to the mailbox this afternoon, I walked up to her and said. "You are Jane Doe, aren't you?" Once she said yes, I went on to tell her who I was and where we had last been acquainted.
And she told me how glad she was that I had spoken up, that she had been sure she knew me but had not managed to figure out why, and that she was glad to know where in the complex I worked.
She asked if I had been wondering who she was, and I said that I was fairly sure I knew, but not positive until I saw her speaking with our mutual acquaintance several weeks before, and as I put it, "I grilled him."
It was really nice, at the end of a long day, to have such a friendly greeting. My time at that agency was spent with some really good people. I'm always glad to renew acquaintance with them.
As to Jane and me, I'm sure we'll get caught up with each other on our mutual trips to the maiboxes.