Meeting Known Strangers

I know the title is kind of an oxymoron, you know like a deafening silence, but such contradictions do happen in life. This is again triggered by another story from Roald Dahl. I'm beginning to like this guy's works!

Isn't it odd that whenever we see a familiar face, all the memories – good and bad – and the emotions tied to it comes flashing before our very eyes? Like an old picture of your high school days, you can't help but smile and reminisce those carefree hours you spent at the Botanical garden checking out cute guys preparing for their CAT. Or opening your jewelry box and finding your very first earring and then remembering the day you got your ears pierced. I know of one who only got her ears pierced when she was already in her college years. Her mom was so scared and even accompanied her to the doctor… anyway, I digress.

Getting back to the Dahl story, this man at a not-so-young age of fifty, whom we shall call Claude, was riding the train on his way to work, and all of a sudden his morning grind was interrupted by a man who sat opposite him. Claude was quite perplexed with the arrogant man in front of him, because he saw something on the stranger's look that was such an overbearing pride. He couldn't seem to shake off the man's face from his mind, he looked familiar Claude said to himself. Looking in further, he came to realize that indeed that man was familiar, for that face belonged to his distant past – a past he would gladly forget.

Claude then remembered the year he almost wanted to kill himself all because of this man sitting in front of him. They belong to the same boarding school together, though this man was his senior. Kingston, let's call the other guy, had been a bullying git to Claude for years. He became Kingston's personal slave, waxed his shoes, tended his laundry, cleaned his room and ran all kinds of errands for him. As if that wasn’t enough, Claude would get a fair amount of beatings from Kingston if things weren't done properly.

If you've had that kind of cognizance, that kind of past, what would you have done, now that you are once again face to face with that bile of a human being? Claude was like everyone else, he so wanted to take his vengeance. But being a respectable man that he is, he never resorted to physical assault. He thought of introducing himself to the man loudly, so that the people on the train could overhear them. He would then talk about how awful Kingston was to him during their school days, and with that he would be able to shame the man inside the train full of people. He could mar the man's dignity.

And so Claude extended his arm and said to other man, "Hi, I'm Claude Knipe, I was at Repton 1935."

The other man replied, "Carole Cleaver, Eton, 1940."

Nye! Mali pala!