Meeting People Is Easy

There was an Englishman opposite me in the bar at Dulles airport who looked like a friend of a friend. But I only met Bob once, five years or more ago, when the three of us went to The Comedy Store. Not surprisingly, I was mistaken. We chatted and swapped e-mail addresses anyway and he signed himself "Not Bob"!

Immediately after the announcement about what food would be served on the flight, a tall man with glasses and a sweater tied around his neck asked Laeticia, the flight attendant serving my section, if food would be served on the flight. I broke the ice with her by joking at his expense as she poured me a Coke. Later she made tea and we discussed accents. I thought she might be from Madrid because she sounded a bit like a friend's Spanish girlfriend, so I called it and I was right!

Later, I wandered the cabin to stretch my legs and bumped into Food Doubt Guy near the toilet. He was hesitant with me and, at first, I thought he'd heard us laughing at his dumb question but that would have been near-impossible over the noise of the engines. We talked casually in transatlantic accents (his was the more pronounced) but he was still looking at me funny. Then I thought I recognized him as Alyson Hannigan's husband, Alexis Denisof from Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel. Physically, he was a match. He was dressed like he just came from a tennis club, which is also not a complete bust. The route we were on was one he'd be likely to take, and he wasn't in the cheap seats either. Plus, his awkwardness with me could be attributed to him thinking, "Does this person know who I am and do I really have to go through that now?" or "Come on... say you recognize me already and we can move on." But we were deep in that surreal mid-flight mental state, so I'll never be quite sure that he wasn't simply the type of well-to-do gentleman upon which Mr. Denisof first based his T.V. character, with an uncanny resemblace to someone famous.