‘Hello, err.. you.’
typed for your pleasure on 5 October 2005, at 2.28 amSdtrk: ‘Moderns’ by Pizzicato five
So this afternoon, I was on campus a couple of hours before my Document processing and production class, playing Death from above 1979 on my secondhand .mp3 player (thanx Tomas!) and working diligently on my homework. This bloke who couldn’t have been much older than I am stopped in front of me, and got my attention. ‘Excuse me, did you go to Shrine?’ he asked. ‘Actually, yeah I did,’ I responded, the little gears whirling furiously in my head as to 1) who the hell this person was, and 2) how the hell they knew what highschool I attended.
‘I thought you looked familiar!’ he said. ‘I walked by the lab windows and saw you in there, and had to stop and see if you were who I thought you were.’
‘Yeah!.. I’m Dave. And you are..?’
‘I’m Kyle.’ He extended his hand to shake.
Now here’s the eerie part of the story. We each clasped each other’s right hands, and it was at that point that I noticed his left arm, up to about halfway up the forearm, was robotic. Well, actually, it was just a prosthetic arm, but saying it was robotic is something you’d undoubtedly expect me to say.
You have to understand; at this point, I’ve got the name Kyle in the cyclotron of my mind, repeating kyle KYLE kyle KYLE kyle at high speed over and over, and without any results whatsoever. I’d say about 80% of the people in my graduating class are kids that I went through several grades previously with, so anyone outside of that group of familiar faces either stood out for some reason or other, or was entirely innocuous. And had Kyle posessed his bionic arm back in highschool, he definitely would’ve stood out. But nope, I was drawing an utter blank on him.
So he asked if I was attending this year’s class reunion (that’s a negatory), and I asked if he was taking classes at this campus this semester, which he answered he was. After three minutes’ worth of what passed for a conversation, Kyle said that he’d let me get back to what I was doing, and bid me farewell. I replied ‘Hopefully, since you’re taking classes here, we’ll run into each other again!’ And that was that..
I have to say that he’s got one hell of a memory if he was able to recognise me, despite my radical change in appearance, after an absence of fifteen years. Until I got home and checked my yearbook, I thought he was some sort of assassin, confirming whether I was the correct target. ‘You’re Dave? From Shrine, right?’ *robotic hand pops off, 10-inch steel blade snaps out of forearm* You know how it is.
I’m rather curious to know the story behind his new mecha-hand, but polite conversation dictates that that’s not the sort of thing you ask someone who was barely a casual aquaintance fifteen years ago. Very good memory, though, squire! Almost too good..
…
O shit, he really is a cyborg assassin! If you’ll excuse me, I have to run for my life, right now. Back in a few
Random similar posts, for more timewasting:
At least they didn't kidnap Barbie on February 1st, 2005
Adventures in Outsidevania on February 5th, 2009
October 5th, 2005 at 5.39 pm
My mechanical arm is responsible for the death of thousands of illegal immigrants from the planet XrBlkzq-khoaqx. I get people asking about it all the time. It’s quite embarrassing at restaurants and sporting events, really.
October 6th, 2005 at 3.07 am
Did you find him in your yearbook? Maybe he changed his name.
And THEN became an assassin!
Or not. If he asked if you were going to the Reunion, my guess is that an assassin he ain’t LOL!
PBS & Lily (who sends regards to the Missus along with instructions to use her skills gained from Armored Core (sp?) to protect you from the biometric man!)
October 6th, 2005 at 9.04 am
Some people are like that. I know this guy who can spot people out of a crowd that he hasn’t seen in years and never knew well to begin with.
Other than that talent he’s about as smart as a burnt pop-tart.
Not stupid enough to be a savant, but stupid nonetheless.
Here’s to Kyle and his robo-digits.
October 8th, 2005 at 2.43 pm
PBS und Lily –
Yeah, I found Kyle in the yearbook when I got home, and I kinda hate to say it, but I don’t remember him at all. Like I said, he was one of those students who wasn’t someone that I attended school with for a long period of time — most of my classmates I’d known since fourth or fifth grade, whereas Kyle showed up, I think, in junior year. Back during highschool, I was a nervous young man who primarily only talked to people I’d known for a while, and even then, that wasn’t a very large number. I’m completely different now. I’m a nervous older man instead. 😉
BTW, Shi-chan will kill me if she sees I’ve mentioned this, but we’ve not played any of the Armored core games in quite a while.. ‘Armored core: Nine breaker’ was the last one to come out, and I’ve passed on that due to ennui with the series and financial embarrasment. We have ‘Armored core: Nexus’ before that, and we’ve played so little of that it’s shameful. And ‘Armored core: Last raven’ comes out in the States next year, and I’ll probably pick that up, as that’s the last PS2 Armored core game before the PS3 makes its debut. Too many games, not nearly enough time.. 😛
October 8th, 2005 at 5.19 pm
I can relate (to an extent)… Even tho’ I only play PC games, lately I’ve not done so due to pressing other issues. Really miss it 🙁
MMORPG’s (or whatever they are called now lol) turned out to be enormously addictive fun, but I really have to focus on getting Lily’s book done before she uses whatever skills she has to off me out of frustration (or just sheer annoyance lol).
But agree with “too many games/not enough time”… trying to figure out a way around that conundrum 😉 Flexing of the Time-Nexus should do it lol
Sounds like your biometric-man was just another of the majority of forgotten not-quite acquaintances we all (don’t) encounter in HS, but with an apparent photographic memory. I stuck pretty much to my “hippie” crowd, as no-one else had anything of interest to offer anyway lol
Regards,
PBS & Lily
October 14th, 2005 at 1.19 pm
In my opinion, you haven’t changed much since high school – other than your voice got deeper *snicker*.
(Off topic – I had some old Pac Man Report Tapes in and have realized that I want no one to ever hear those. Why no one told me I was such a dork I’ll never know – and don’t way it was the breasts because I didn’t have them then)
Kyle was a no show but Mark Schneider was there with his attractive wife. He’s a copyright lawyer living in Ferndale. He asked about you. The usual “kewl” crown was there – the Bucci twins, Mary Ellen Seymour (hottie, no really), Barb O’neil, Mark Soma, Mike Dineen, etc… Elaine Chouinard’s baby apparantly died (?) so some people opted out to grieve. We pretty much drank for free, since lots of people paid but were no shows.
Krista got married (again) and had a baby. She’s as big as a house.
I really hope the twenty is held someplace like a banquet hall so we can hear each other. “The Atrium” at D’Amatos is pretty much the area in front of the bar, so as the evening got later, it got more crowded with not-Shrine people.
And then I saw the same people at the game on Sunday.
Yes, they still point to my picture in the hallway and say – that’s the Witch who went here, and then I magically appear behind them, 15 years later with boobs and hair, proving that it totally pays to be a sinner. I’m totally a legend.
Will work on crashing the ’91 gig.