making friends...

About a year ago* this time I met a man in Riverside park with whom I had the following conversation or something very much like it, I forget exactly):

Man: My name's Kenneth. What's yours?
Me: Mary (A small and meaningless precaution in the face of quasi-sketchy peole who might just be stalkers)
Kenneth: Where are you going?
Me: home to take a nap. (I was actually going to a museum, but didn't feel like I wanted to have to disinvite him...)
K: Can I come with you?
Me: (fumbling confusedly - I thought I had avoided the need to disinvite!)
K: Can I be your boyfirend?
M: I have a boyfriend.
K: (undeterred) Can I be your lover?
M: No.
K: Ok, well it was nice to meet you.
M: (some formal farewell before I skedaddled...)

At the time I was amazed at having been bested in conversation (ie, left speechless) by a homelss, and clearly not mentally normal, person. The reason I tell this story now is that I met a man on the subway on Friday, with a bunch of plastic bags and a CD player, who came over to me to compliment me on "my purple outfit" (purple skirt and blue shirt) and then went back to his seat. His nasal voice was familiar, and for the rest of my train ride I fought the temptation to ask him if his name was Kenneth.

So far, just a story of funny coincidences, but when the same man was on my train back from Shabbos, and he came over to me (out of a dozen plus people on the train) and woke me up from my traditional Q-train slumber by poking me in the knee to compliment me on my Big Straw Hat, then returning to his seat again without a conversation, I wondered if Someone Out There was trying to send me some sort of message. I mean, if I believed in bashert I might be convinced ;)


*I thought I posted about this before, but I can't find it, so I apologize for any redundancy or discrepancy in the rendition...