Some months ago,
Tamara blogged about how much of a difference a little delay here and there can make, how those
extra minutes or seconds can change things in a big way. Her story dealt with the timing of accidents, a pretty serious subject. My story, however, while also about the strange nature of timing, is much, much lighter. My yarn is merely an innocuous tale of how a mundane quest for a fried treat led to a chance encounter.
It begins with my
Popeye's moratorium. Misnamed, perhaps, but it's the once-every-two-months limit I put on myself when it comes to fried chicken. On this plan, I was "due" to treat myself sometime in February. One week ago was Feb. 28. That morning I knew I could use the end of the month plus the new job I was starting the following week (or so I thought at the time) as excuses to grab some Cajun fried goodness, or I could exceed my goal and stretch it out longer into March. Also, my usual lunch bunch hadn't met for some time, so I briefly considered calling Trish (the ringleader) to get the ball rolling somewhere else and leave Popeye's for dinner. But I decided to scrap being social and get my Popeye's on for lunch by myself.
I meant to go early for lunch but got delayed. By the time I finally left, I went to my usual Popeye's, even though I'd read some weeks before that that store had had a kitchen fire (lots of double words there there). I took a chance that it had been fixed already. But no, it was boarded up. I knew where the next closest restaurant was, but I've avoided that particular one for years; they regularly screwed up my order way back when. So I figured I'd go to the one in Pflugerville (a suburban town just north of Austin), even though it wasn't all that close and didn't make much sense. But a couple minutes later, I decided that was even sillier than it first sounded, so I made a u-turn and decided to give the "bad" one a chance.
A slow drive up a busy street finally deposited me at Popeye's #2. I went in, saw they were low on chicken, and decided I didn't want to wait around for the next batch. Plus, I just didn't get a good feeling there. So I got back into my car and went what turned out to be the slow way to Pflugerville anyway.
So finally, past 1 pm, I was at Popeye's #3 to pick up what was now a late lunch. The woman in front of me took forever to order because she had three separate orders to make with three different bundles of cash, presumably from coworkers. I wasn't in a hurry, so it didn't bother me much. Then after I got my order, I tried to ask the cashier for some honey packets, but she had disappeared to the back. So my stay was delayed a couple more minutes waiting for that.
Finally, I had everything I needed. And while I didn't pay any attention to it at the time, in retrospect I remember hearing a female voice somewhere saying something like, "--oo be doing all the way up here?" It definitely wasn't directed at me, so I paid it no attention and turned around to leave.
And there stood Trish and Kristi.
The three of us froze silently for one very long and very slow second before recognition sank in and we laughed in disbelief. It had just so happened that Kristi's mobile job had been in that area, which just happened to be near Trish's office, who had just happened to suggest that they meet at Popeye's because she rarely gets to eat there anymore. And it had just so happened that I'd taken a long, circuitous route to take me to the same restaurant, on the same day, at the same time. When Trish and Kristi entered the restaurant, Kristi had told her sister that that looked like me at the counter. Trish had replied with what I apparently caught most of, "What would Dipu be doing all the way up here?" (I'm paraphrasing).
Had I made just one decision differently, we would never have run into each other. We only had that tiny window of time in which to run into each other, a mere 30 seconds of overlap. If I had left just one minute earlier, I would have pulled out of the parking lot before either of them arrived. Let alone, given that I only pick up food from Popeye's every two months (or longer), and given that Trish and Kristi eat there even less often, we somehow picked the same day and time to go to the same one, one that isn't even that close to my house?
So, for the first time in I can't even remember how long, I ate a meal INSIDE a Popeye's, because I joined the sisters for lunch, and our 30-second window stretched out another hour-plus. It may not be funny or interesting to anyone else, but it's something that still makes us laugh in disbelief.
The postscript on this story is that while I was relating this to
Barbara, I remarked on how incredibly unlikely this was, because it's not like we ran into each other at a restaurant we frequent such as Alborz. The odds of running into someone there are actually pretty good. Well, the next day, Trish got the lunch bunch together for lunch at, of course, Alborz. And there we ran into Omid, who just happened to be meeting Amy for lunch there. And as we combined groups and went in, he saw Alison (of David and Alison) walking in with yet another group, again completely by chance. Even for Alborz, that was a lot of chance encounters in one day.
Maybe I should have bought a lottery ticket that week. Oh well...
Labels: Friends, Lunch
