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Years ago, I moved abroad to study and ended up staying there.
I often came back home and hung out either with my childhood friend (Anna) - who didn't go to the same school as me and had her own friends- or my family, amongst which my cousin (Julie), who I went to school with and with whom I had a lot of friends in common. When we were in school, Anna sometimes went with me to Julie's parties and she was familiar with our group of friends.
This happened in our early 30s. By then, I hadn't seen my cousin's friends in over a decade.
One night as I was out with Anna and her friends, at a nice terrace with food and drinks, this guy appeared and joined the group late. My jaw dropped: this was an old friend from school, Julie's best friend (and someone I had a crush on) and I hadn't seen him since I was 18.
Now this guy is very unusual looking and wears very distinctive glasses, tiny round frames. And his name is equally unusual (let's call him Napoleon). I recognised him at once. I turned to look at Anna, who also knows him, but she had gone to the bathroom.
I spring up from my my chair and say: "Napoleon!!" He says: "Yes?" with a confused expression. "It's me, OP! I can't believe you're here!" He looks at me confused and says "I'm sorry, do I know you?".
Now I'm confused.
"Napoleon, it's me, OP! Julie's cousin!"
When I saw his confused expression, I got a chill down my spine, because there's no way you can forget your best friend of 15 years like that. Just then, I realised that the girl beside him is his girlfriend. Except I heard from Julie that he got married. Anna comes back from the bathroom and immediately sees him and says: 'Oh! Napoleon! I haven't seen you in years! How are you?' 'I'm... fine..." he says.
And then I proceed to name every friend we had in common, the places we went, the school we attended, as Anna recounted the times we hung out, to try and jog his memory. We are all very, very confused. I'm getting freaked. I was basically harrassing him with memories like a doofus until he said: 'Oh, yes, of course...' and he turned pale. That's when I realised this guy was probably living a double life and I had just blown his cover (luckily I didn't ask where his wife was, I knew better than that!). Anna and I said we were happy to see him and left it at that, after a good 45 minute of us yelling names in his face and saying : 'don't you remember?!'.
Napoleon got really pale. He turned to his girlfriend and said: 'I don't feel well, I'm think I'm going to go home." He got up and left, and everyone said: 'Bye Napoleon, sorry you're feeling sick, see you next time."
I turned to his girlfriend and asked her if he was ok. Then I said: 'That was Napoleon, right?'. 'Yes'. 'Napoleon Lastname?' 'What?! No! Napoleon Totallydifferentlastname".
That's right. This was just some poor dude I'd never met before, who happened to look exactly like Napoleon, and happened to also be called Napoleon. And I harrassed him so badly I made him ill and go home on a saturday night.
The next day I found him on facebook and apologised profusely. He said I was so forceful that he began to doubt himself and was freaked out he didn't remember any of these people he supposedly spent years with.
"TL;DR" : I spent nearly an hour trying to convince this total stranger that I knew him, until he doubted himself and went home feeling sick.
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