Many moons ago, I was obliged to take public transit back home from the 'burbs after a night of watching cult movies with a bunch of giggling acidheads. Things had calmed down quite a bit, but were still a little wiggly around the edges.
When I got up to the ALRT platform, I recognized a friend-of-a-friend… a cartoonist that I had met once a couple of months before. “Hi, Wayne!” sez Mudd. “Pardon me?” I’m embarrassed to find that not only is the guy not Wayne after all, he doesn’t even particularly look like him. I explain that I’ve mistaken him for someone else and sheepishly hide my nose in a book until the train comes. Buddy gets on the Eastbound train, which spares me further embarrassment.
That is, until Wayne gets on the train at the next stop. “Hi, Wayne!” I say reflexively. His look of blank incomprehension tells me that I have made the same stupid mistake again. More mumbled apologies, and I get off the train and transfer to the bus that’ll take me the rest of the way home.
I’m doing better now. I manage to keep it together enough to restrain myself from greeting Wayne again as I pass him, seated near the front of the bus. I take my seat near the rear doors and open my book. (Robert Anton Wilson - I forget which.) I’m unable to concentrate on it, though. Why did I keep seeing Wayne everywhere? I’d hardly spoken to him when I met him – why was he on my mind? Well, the friend he was a friend of was an ex-girlfriend who I’d been happy to be “just friends” with for a healthy long time – he was her boyfriend, in point-of-fact. Was it some weird subconscious jealousy manifesting?
While I’m busy psychoanalysing myself, “Wayne” was ready to get off the bus, and stopped by my seat. “Hi, Larry,” he said. “Say hi to --------- for me, if you see her.”
Some time later, I had it from her that Wayne was a bit mystified as to why I’d snubbed him with such obvious deliberateness.
He moved to California shortly thereafter, and I never did see him again.
Just the twice. Or four times, if you want to look at it that way.