Nobody

I have been very fortunate in my life to meet and be friends with some amazing people. I have the misfortune -- whenever I see a few of these people out'n'about, in public -- of them simply acting as though they don't know me. Given, a lot of the times, I haven't been in contact with these individuals for maybe five years, so you're probably saying to yourselves, "they don't recognize you." Yes they do.

I was drinking and having a blast playing some PS3 and watching some late night programming buzzed over at a friend's apartment, and I swore a guy there, who was a friend of a friend of the person who's apartment we were intoxicated in, was the same person I had gone to high school with. It's late in the evening, getting close to midnight, and we had all been playing and finishing off a case, and someone asks the guy I recognize if he wouldn't like a ride home, since I suppose he hadn't driven to where we were at. He agreed, being nowhere near eligible to handle the road had he driven there, and the person offering him the lift home is disgruntled because they have to drive further into Hutch, yet it wasn't that big of deal to them, they would do it to see their friend arrive safely home. The guy I recognized says that getting to his house is actually a lot easier than his friend imagines because he's in South Hutch, and that there's no turn-offs, and strange back-roads, you could take the highway for forty-to-forty-five minutes and get off in South Hutch, and then it's less than a few minutes from there. The friend driving concluded that it still was a ways from where he lived, which was Lyons. He lived near Lyons if I remember correctly.

I chose to use this bit of information to ask the guy I recognized how long he had lived in South Hutch. He said around ten years, give or take, so I figured perhaps he went to school in South Hutch knowing he was a few years younger than myself. He said he went to Hutch. So I asked him what about high school, same district as Hutch, or did he choose to transfer? He said he went to Haven. Cool beans. I still believe he's the same kid I know from high school, and the more I thought of it, it made sense. Back to when I was in high school, a friend of mine and myself were asking where he had transferred from, him being a new member of the NHS concert band -- I believe I was either a junior or senior at the time -- and this individual had transferred from Haven to Nickerson, and, being as popular as I was, I knew a few people who went to Haven, and I had asked him if he knew of them as well, where he had said he did not. That was pristine and clear in my mind, after this guy I recognized in my friend's apartment said he had went to Haven.

It dawned on me what this guy's last name was, so I asked him, was his last name Blankiddiboo? Yes, it was. So I said the first name I had in my memory, and he said no, was not him. Then, did he have a relative, like a cousin perhaps or brother with that name? Nope, and from his answers now, my inquiries were starting to annoy him. I then went ahead and gave up, but still I knew it was him, I told him then that he looked an awful lot like this kid I knew. He shrugged it off, or maybe said something along the lines of, "I get that a lot," or, "I'm always being mistaken for someone else." I wanted to retort, "Maybe you should stick to going by your first name (insert guy I recognized-real name) instead of your middle name, (insert name guy I recognized is using) That might be why so many people claim they know you."

Was he in witness protection, or what the hell? Why lie to a stranger about your name? For that matter, he had my other mutual friends believing he was this other person, and a good friend of mine who was introduced to him that night believing he was Humperdink Blankiddiboo, when I knew the moment I spotted him, heard that raspy, obnoxious laugh of his, that he was Kenovassa Blankiddiboo.

I had once entered a successful national pizza chain in Minas Tirith, Middle-Earth; a fictional location obviously, so none of you fuckers can connect the dots on who I'm talking about in this ledger. A person I considered a friend unlike an acquaintance, or, a person you might run in to occasionally, was working tables and our eyes met. I smiled and waved, my friend however, ignored the gesture and continued cleaning. I ended up being sat in his section, and my hostess took my drink order, and since I already knew what I wanted without the assistance of a menu, I ordered my meal with the hostess as well. Refills should have went through my friend, or the asshole I recognized as a friend I used to know well, instead as I was watching him work, he had gone to the back and talked to a co-worker who happened to end up being my waitress who refilled my drink, brought me a plate before my pizza came, and delivered the pizza to my table once it had been prepared and removed from the oven. I waited a long time until he finally dropped by to bring me my receipt in the PRECIOUS receipt trapper-keeper. He placed it on the table quickly, with a, "pay up at the register when you're finished," acting as though he had to rush to get back to the kitchen in order to get his helmet and oxygen tank on over a heavy, flame-retardant uniform, and get to the inferno before the orphanage burned down. I stopped him. "Hold on, Gale, right? Gale Benningtonston..."
"Yeah..." You know that sounding yeah drawn out, cautious of how you know them.
"It's Austin. Smith." He knew who I was. "I worked with Fangora for like half a year. I used to party at your place..." I could've listed everything I did with this person, which was a pretty decent list, he reacted friendlier, but unlike someone who hadn't recognized you and this being the first time it clicked, he wasn't surprised. He was more concerned with ending this stop and chat to get back in the kitchen where he proceeded to bullshit around with his co-workers. He did nothing, but talk back there.

Let's talk about five years ago. I assume a lot of shit has happened in everyone else's life in those few years, but that also shows how overwhelming all the information and jargon -- two categories I'll stick with in comparing the information surge we don't necessarily notice about, oh I don't know, television programming, Internet searches, complications in every day life, to name a few -- has cluttered and replaced other memories. What am I trying to say? I feel like all the changes our lives have made just in the last half-decade or so, citing an example, how more of us carry cellphones now than we used to, we just simply forgot easier than we used to. Homeless people, surprisingly, carry around cellphones. Don't ask me why or how this is possible, I've witnessed it more than just one rare occurrence. And all that you can do with a cellphone anymore, it's no wonder people treat an electronic device like a personal assistant with all that's going on in their world. I feel like we bog our brains with shit, for what, to entertain ourselves, waste time. Maybe our priorities or what we perceive as our "priorities" contribute to a river of information entering one ear, that might be processed within our processor, or might just spill out the other ear, culminating in some people perceiving five years as more like ten, twenty years. Daily, we absorb a week's worth of information. This might be why Gale Benningtonston treated me like a stranger. Could I be that forgettable?

I can't account for other people's behavior. It seems awfully ignorant to play coy with something so commonly referred to as a courtesy to say hello to a person you recognize out in public. It's not like I'm a stock broker and he was a drum circle leader in an Occupy Wall Street protest. I like the whole "let's get out there and do something about it" attitude from these people. Having said that, I don't really buy the video of a protester getting his leg ran over by a police motorcycle-defense. Here's a guy screaming his head off, "they're running over my leg!" If you haven't seen the video, I'd search douche bag acts like he's hurt; from what I could tell, he was purposefully sticking his leg under a police motorcyclist who was trying to get through the crowd of people blocking a busy Oakland street? Was it NYC? So, he stuck his leg under the wheel of the motorcycle, started screaming and thrashing around, while someone with their cellphone camcorder recorded the whole ordeal, the police officer noted the guy's leg was gonna get smashed if he didn't move it, even stopped his motorcycle to help get the guy's leg out from under his vehicle, but persistently the guy continued to just lie there screaming bloody murder, continuing to stick his leg under the wheel of the bike. How about the morons who lock arms and chant, while a brigade of armored police officers charge them with trespassing, and try to break loose the chain-gang to hull most of the like to jail, and they're screaming, "You have no right to arrest me! Why are you cuffing me!? This iniquitous imprisonment is beyond convoluted!" You're blocking a public street. They don't want you there, and so you're trespassing, plus whatever other shit they want to slap you with for being a public nuisance. You're also, or at one time, were living in a park. Your next crib is the subway tunnels because winter is approaching, you hobos. Statistically maybe 1% of those working Wall Street embezzled. You realize you're preaching to grunts just trying to get to work, right? The real bad-guys just flip to cartoons when the news stations begin to show footage of your protest.