Over the years, I’ve known a lot of people – and I’m not just talking about friends. A lot of the blog posts here on Trusty Water Blog are about strange one-off encounters I have with unusual individuals who I happen across during my day to day life. It’s a little sad that I’ll never truly know what happened to them following our brief window of interaction, but a person can wonder…
- Whatever happened to old Lofty? Corsham’s ‘town drunk’ as I have heard him described. Lofty was just a nickname that I knew him by and, as it turns out, Lofty was the very same nickname that he knew me by. I’ve not seen him around the streets in about five years, which is sad. He was quite old last time I saw him, so I like to believe he retired to a tropical island somewhere. Or maybe he’s now a beekeeper in the Sussex Downs, like his father. Either way, he’s been more successful than Elvis Presley.
- Whatever happened to that woman who approached me in a nightclub in London, only to compliment Colin the Cow in my pocket? I will never know. I could re-meet her and not know, since I can’t remember her face. Hopefully she owns a prestigious toy shop where she gets to look at cute finger puppets all day long.
- Whatever happened to that man who taught my friend Mairi and I how to lure the Loch Ness Monster out of its secret underground cave system using only a smiley face t-shirt? Well, I hope that he returned to see the monsters one more time, luring them out with a smiley face shirt (as he claimed to have done previously) before joining them to live out the rest of his days in peace in their underground cave system.
- Whatever happened to the the young woman who stripped herself fully naked over ChatRoulette after I suggested we play Word Association? Well, hopefully she connected to the guy who masturbated over the camera while I tried to articulate that I didn’t enjoy watching him do so and they both enjoyed some sexual internet shenanigans together, after all, I don’t want anyone to be sexually frustrated! But, having said that, I have two other hopes for their future: I hope that they both have now learned the importance of consent in all sexual scenarios and I also hope that the women learned to appreciate Word Association. It’s really fun.
- Whatever happened to the homeless woman who forcefully kissed me for several minutes on the streets of Bath? Well, first of all, I hope she’s not homeless anymore – homelessness is the shame at the heart of our society, after all. After that, I hope that she educated herself about consent and sexual harassment, as it was apparent to me that these were two areas of knowledge in which she was sadly lacking.
- Whatever happened to the friend-turned-enemy who threatened me with a knife? Well, in part, I do know, because I passed him on the street on night six years later and he didn’t follow up on his promise to stab me “next time” so I like to imagine that between then and now he spent some time in prison, reflected on his crimes and came out of it a better person.
It’s sad not to have closure about such things, but then, in life, sometimes we don’t get closure even when dealing with people we have been very close with – let alone strangers we share a single experience with. But it’s nice to wonder and it’s nice to imagine. I want them all to be happy. As there are many other people like this that I could be musing about in this post, I may well write something similar to this in the future. We shall see…
