Here’s the rule about the least favorite people in your life: you will run into them, more often than people you feel OK about, and a whole lot more than the ones you’d love to bump into because, Jesus, you only see them maybe every five years if you’re lucky. It’s just one of those nasty cosmic jokes where you practically hear cackling coming from the clouds as once again you encounter somebody you dread having to chit-chat with.
I’ve lived in Charlotte so long it’s likely that when I leave the house I’m going to see someone I know — make that absolutely guaranteed if I’m not wearing make-up or happen to have on my comfy pants with the bleach stain in front — so I’ve had plenty of run-ins to draw this conclusion from. It’s not a simple matter of proximity, either, like maybe your least favorite people happen to live closer to you than the favorite ones. A recent outing made that head-jarringly clear.
I had traveled so far it felt like into another time zone to see a famous author in a venue that authors passing through Charlotte are often set down in now, even though it’s so far from the rest of civilization that you practically need a passport to get there.
Having driven through industrial bleakness, hobbled over the painful gravel parking lot in thin leather shoes, and made it in the semi-gloom to my seat, praying it had been scoured, I scanned the crowd for familiar faces. My humble hope was that I might spot one of my writer or serious-reader friends, a reasonable expectation, but oh, no, that would’ve made too much sense. The sole person I recognized out of the entire group wasn’t a fellow literary-mate but instead a woman I detest, and therefore run into all the time in accordance with the spiteful rules of our universe.
Still, even as I watched her stream down the aisle with her signature joyless grin, I was convinced that it couldn’t be the same person so many miles away from the sites of our usual sour encounters, but as my eyes adjusted I realized that sure enough, it didn’t just look like her, it was her. The disappointment as well as the sheer unlikelihood of this crushed down on me as if some of the planks crisscrossing the ceiling had fallen on my head, but then I remembered that it made perfect cosmic sense. This was just an extreme version of being overtaken by her at the grocery store.
There are three distinct kinds of unpleasant encounters. The first is with people that you actively dislike. When I look into this woman’s pinched face as her cold hand squeezes my arm with phony goodwill I cringe inside. These are the people who set off a loud clanging of distaste and guess what — they’re always charging straight your way as if answering a summoning bell. Actually a lot of times you sense that they don’t like you, either, yet there you both are, going through a little social jig because you have to. There’s one lady whose face always falls slightly the second we catch sight of each other, probably reflecting my own expression, but she quickly yanks it back up into a smile, although never bothering to actually stop while talking at me.
The second kind of annoying encounter is with people who are basically OK, but somehow make you feel like you have to generate stimulating conversation while they stand there like poles. They mysteriously prompt this strenuous obligation even though they have no compulsion to contribute much themselves. Ironically you’ll find yourself babbling extra-long to these dullards in an instinctive attempt to fill the void that trails them like a tail, burning through an increasingly desperate list of questions such as “How’s the kids?”, ” The dog?”, “The lawn?” while they answer in grunts or monosyllables.
The third kind is the guilt-hosing that comes from running into somebody you’ve dumped, like a lover or, worse yet, your hairdresser. With an ex-squeeze you can at least get an ego boost from the likelihood that they’re probably still pining for you at that very moment across the produce aisle, but with your hairdresser it’s all guilt. I’ve had to drop a few, but there was only one whose mournful face regularly re- surfaced to haunt me, usually in the cereal section of the grocery store. We women dump hairdressers the same way men dump us by just never calling again, but that makes all the blame come rushing back when we see them, causing us to burn with shame as they coldly eye our traitor haircuts.
These encounters, however irritating, are still better than the all-time weirdest: running into somebody and not being sure whether you’ve slept with them or not. Definitely a sign that it’s time to get out of town.
This article appears in Nov 19-25, 2003.
