A Few Laughs

At the comedy show a guy I knew in college sat next to me. An odd bit of serendipity, we caught up in the way false acquaintances in forced proximity do: grad school, interrupted thesis films, teaching for him; job, job, job for me; so-and-so left L.A.; someone else is at the agency; her ex is writing for an Emmy-winning comedian. Then, the man sitting in front of us turned around to introduce himself. He, too, had gone to the same college and remembered the guy beside me. There was a brief moment he said he remembered me, or at least seeing me once, though I couldn’t discern whether this was out of politeness or genuine remembrance. In the succeeding ten years I aged and now look quite unlike I did as a student. His name and likeness inspired zero memories, so it must have been the former.

No. 059