Strange Chance Encounter
For the four years I worked at the Gazette, I sat about 10 feet away from a guy named Dan DeNicola, who writes the weekend calendar listings. In that four years, I don't think I ever said anything more to him than hello. In fact, I don't think anyone did. The only people I ever saw him talking to were his editor asking if the calendar was finished and the tech support people, whom he seemed to call on frequently. Not that I had anything against him, but he just radiated this odd kind of "don't talk to me" vibe. Probably had something to do with having the most mind-numbing job in the editorial department.
So yesterday I was on the subway, and who sits down next to me but Dan DeNicola and his wife. We went through the whole hey, how are you, what are you doing in New York thing, then he asked about Columbia, etc. It turned out he was in the city to visit his wife, who lives there. For the whole 20 years they've been married, he's lived in Northampton and she's lived on the Upper West Side -- he works at the Gazette during the week then goes to see her on the weekends. Twenty years! Told you he was odd.
Anyway, the fairly normal conversation I had with him over the course of five subway stops was far and away the longest I'd ever spoken with him, even after four years of his face being directly in my field of vision every day for eight hours a day. I asked how things were going at the Gazette, and he said the paper had been sold...which of course happened well over a year ago, and I only left at the end of the summer. Anyway, he said he'd tell people at the Gazette I said hi, but I realized he might not actually know my name. ("I saw that tall kid with glasses on the subway.")
Whenever I'm in a big crowded city, I always have this kind of notion/hope feeling in the back of my mind that I'll run into someone I know from long ago and we'll reconnect it'll be this whole fun, memorable experience. Instead, I run into people I barely know and have to awkwardly come up with things to say to them. Who knows what kind of random person I'll run into next? Someone I worked with at the amusement park in high school? The parent of a kid I interviewed about gingerbread houses? The possibilities are endless.
So yesterday I was on the subway, and who sits down next to me but Dan DeNicola and his wife. We went through the whole hey, how are you, what are you doing in New York thing, then he asked about Columbia, etc. It turned out he was in the city to visit his wife, who lives there. For the whole 20 years they've been married, he's lived in Northampton and she's lived on the Upper West Side -- he works at the Gazette during the week then goes to see her on the weekends. Twenty years! Told you he was odd.
Anyway, the fairly normal conversation I had with him over the course of five subway stops was far and away the longest I'd ever spoken with him, even after four years of his face being directly in my field of vision every day for eight hours a day. I asked how things were going at the Gazette, and he said the paper had been sold...which of course happened well over a year ago, and I only left at the end of the summer. Anyway, he said he'd tell people at the Gazette I said hi, but I realized he might not actually know my name. ("I saw that tall kid with glasses on the subway.")
Whenever I'm in a big crowded city, I always have this kind of notion/hope feeling in the back of my mind that I'll run into someone I know from long ago and we'll reconnect it'll be this whole fun, memorable experience. Instead, I run into people I barely know and have to awkwardly come up with things to say to them. Who knows what kind of random person I'll run into next? Someone I worked with at the amusement park in high school? The parent of a kid I interviewed about gingerbread houses? The possibilities are endless.
posted by Ryan Davis | 2:39 PM
1 Comments:
Ryan,
I am unsettled by the way you describe a former colleague. Dan is a private person, but in no way a strange one. What comes across to me, in this posting, is your own lack of initiative in getting to know Dan in the time you worked in the same newsroom. I respectfully suggest that you use your expanding skills in communications to reach out to people, not objectify them. Larry
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