And me with all my luggage at my feet...

 Excerpt from my travel journal. 7/17/10. Eric.


       I first saw him walk up to where everyone was waiting for the next tube to arrive. Euston station on a Sunday afternoon and me with all my luggage at my feet. He looked like him. That's why I noticed. The way he was trying to read the sign... and the color of his forearm. His face and hair resembled that familiar figure in my mind. I wondered if he was from Georgia Tech like the back of his shirt said or if maybe he had just attended that event there.  "Graduates Picnic on the Lawn" was all I could read from where I stood. He was staring at the tube map across the rails on the opposite wall and trying to figure something out. He turned toward me and asked me to read what it said next to Green Park, explaining that he could not see. "He needed to take the connection to the Jubilee line."

     "Jubilee and Picadilly", I read aloud as I turned toward him. He spoke with an american accent. I added, "Where are you from?" and kept looking at him. He didn't get it.

      "From the west of London. I'm coming from the west and I'm trying to go east on the Jubilee line. I'm not able to see what that says from here, though."

         Is he drunk or hung-over or maybe he's on something? I think maybe he just didn't have his glasses on... because he could see fine when I produced my pocket map of all the tube lines and apologized for it being so small. I offered it to him to look at anyway and he said it was alright (being small and therefore hard to see and all) and then he looked at it and we found the line that said JUBILEE and he muttered to himself somethings, and I could tell he could see just fine. So, I'm pretty sure he has just forgotten his glasses and wasn't drunk at all. He just didn't think to wear glasses before going out in one of the biggest cities in the world. Maybe he was just a bit spacey... or an air head...  He was definitely nerdy. I warmed up to him right away.
    Somehow, I managed to word my question of whether he from Georgia Tech or not in a way that he understood and our conversation soon turned toward the lesser obvious link between the two of us. Suddenly waiting for the Victoria Line to Brixton was not the only thing we had in common. Is he for real?  I wondered. He was so caught up in conversing he seemed unaware of anything else around him... and on top of that he may or may not be able to see properly. I noticed he had no kind of bag or backpack with him. Most everyone else did. He said he was doing an accounting internship and was staying in Milton Keyes right now, and in-spite of the lack of luggage, he was heading to the Heathrow Airport. By the looks of it, I wondered if he really would get where he needed to go.
    "Wow... he reminds me of Eric..." I thought, as the conversation continued and our tube arrived. Something in his mannerism and way of speech made me smile inside. He seemed from another planet not just a different country. We moved with the rest of England toward the tiny doorway of the tube where everyone was trying to get on and off all at the same time. My bags doubled me into a second person, so being in an underground station meant I had to be as quick as possible to get both myselves through the doorway before it shut on one of us, leaving the other stranded. He kept talking as we pushed our way through the crowd and we hoisted the luggage half of me onto into the tube car, with both of us quickly jumping through the door as it whooshed closed. We burst into laughter as we nearly fell off our feet with the accelerated motion of the car. I couldn't see, but I was sure the door hit him. He managed to get in though. We crammed ourselves further onto the tube with the rest of England and kept talking about California.
    He had been there once, maybe twice... I could not tell if he was speaking of the same trip or if these recollections were two separate occasions, but either way he was genuinely in love with Monterey. There was a simplicity to the way he talked about things. He had a child-like wonder, a nerdy sense of awe and genuineness all at once and it was fascinating to me. Doubtless we would have continued chatting about ourselves and what we were both doing in this country had I not informed him we'd arrived at his stop.

"This is Green Park", I announced as soon as I had a chance.

I was looking past him through the open door at the sign on the underground station's wall.

"Oh Shit!" was the last thing I heard him say before he dashed out of sight.

I turned away and laughed out loud as the rest of us lurched onward. He did look like him... he really did.