Musings: Old friends

Bumped into an old friend/neighbor whom I haven't seen in a while today. I didn't notice him at first.

Not long after I put down my stuff on the empty table next to him, he looked up and said hi. I think he saw the panic/confusion in my eyes because he then asked, "How's aunty and uncle?" (i.e. my parents), and then it clicked who he was.

He said he'd seen me around the cafe a couple of times doing work and stuff, but I didn't recognise him at all. It feels weird to be remembered... I always feel like a blurry insignificant extra in the background of people's movie of their life. I don't think I'll ever get used to being remembered.

We had a few simple exchanges like, "How's your mom?"; "Where do you live now?"; "Is your bro still living in the neighborhood?";"I miss the playground"; "We haven't seen each other since high school!"; "Yea none of us are married so we're all pretty much disappointments for our parents", "Haha same". Idk how appropriate it was to ask anything else so we mostly ate in silence tbh. It sounds kinda awkward (and it might have been for him? haha), but it was actually quite a nice lil conversation.

I'm glad that I got to see him again. He's still as gentle (to me at least) as he was back then. Really made my day ☺