Pleased to meet you

 

Most people have no issues with greeting people. You have to sidestep them as you enter bars and restaurants. Every day, everywhere. Strangers and groups of friends air-kissing and shaking hands like there is no tomorrow.

 "It's lovely to meet you."

 "I haven't seen you for ages."

 "Let me introduce you to..."

 Shake shake, hug hug, kiss kiss.

 For me, it's not so easy. When I meet someone, I have a second of awkwardness, not knowing what to do next. I wonder if I should be shaking hands in a work situation. Or in a social setting, kissing on one cheek, or two, or that half handshake half hug thing that men sometimes do to greet other men.

 It's all very confusing.

 I once tried a both cheeks' kiss, and due to my hesitancy and uneasiness I accidentally kissed the recipient on the earlobe. The memory of that still makes me shudder.

 I use these examples as background for the strange thing I did once when I bumped into someone in the street and greeting them went horribly wrong.

 I had just left the office in Noel Street, and my mind was on what to buy for dinner that evening and what to watch on my long commute home.

At the edge of Carnaby Street, I bumped into our office cleaner, Austin. a lovely kind man who called everyone boss but knew very few other English words. I was walking towards the tube station, and he was heading the other way back towards the office to clean the emptying workplace.

We both said hello and smiled as we approached each other, but then he stopped in the center of the pavement. He wanted to tell me something I thought, so I stopped too.

This is when things went wrong.

 He raised his hand towards me. In hindsight, I now understand that he was pointing towards the office; to say I’m on my way into Noel Street to clean up the debris from you and your colleagues day. But that second of greeting awkwardness took hold of me, and as his hand started to move to point, I thought he wanted to shake hands, so I also reached out my hand.

 There was sudden confusion in Austin's eyes.

There was a sinking, uncomfortable feeling in my stomach.

He looked down.

I looked down.

 And the sight that greeted both of our eyes was me holding Austin's outstretched finger.

We both looked back up at each other and then looked down again at the improbable sight.

 I searched my brain to try to think of a reason why I would be holding his finger like this. I could laugh and say it was a joke, but too much time had already passed to claim it was a joke.

The puzzled look on his face seemed to burn into soul, and as my logical had brain deserted me, muscle memory took over.

I shook his outstretched finger like we were shaking hands. Acting like shaking a finger at the edge of soho is a normal thing that normal people might do.

 Then I released his finger, and we both took a big step backwards. pushed apart like opposing pole magnets repelled from each other.

 I think I mentioned something about the weather, the default conversation setting on anyone from the UK, before we both hurried away.

The next time we bumped into each other, in the office, I'm grateful that he acted like nothing unusual had occurred out in the street that day, but I made sure I took a different route back to the station from that day on, just in case.