today i was walking down the aisle of a mall with hiljainen when i suddenly spot a girl by a payphone and she reminds me of someone. i go "i think i know that girl", then i turn and stare while walking by. she starts waving frantically in my direction. that's when i recognise her: she's a student whom i met in my library once, and to be accurate the last day of work before summer break. she had dropped by to say hi to the people at the desk, whom she knew from before, and i was around dragging my miserable bones through the last sleepy afternoon. at the time, she had kept me with my back to the wall for about half an hour, ranting about her plans for the future (i don't know why, except that she's a chatterbox and always appears overexcited about any event in reality) while i nodded my way through the monologue. i can't say i feigned attention, because she wasn't boring. she was simply mentioning too many concepts and details for my brain to keep up unless i decided to gave her my whole attention, which is something that at the end of july i was quite incapacitated to do.
so today after waving at me and saying hi she motions me to wait until her call is over, and then proceeds to expand on her day/week/lifelong experiences, with the usual enthusiasm. i ask her if she wants to come along to the movies with us, but she replies that it's her birthday, so she's waited for at home. i was sort of glad that she remembered my face enough to recognise me out of the blue and in a crowd, and that's my reason for reporting the event here. most of times i feel pretty transparent, and my not having much to say to people probably justifies why they wouldn't notice me much or at all. it seems a prudent attitude of nods and interested remarks is indeed sometimes able to fix my persona in someone's mind for about a month. nice to know, especially so i can avoid it if i want.