Strangers in the night.

The other day I ran into an old friend. You might remember her from my April 2007 entry.

I was outside of Avery Fisher Hall, walking through a huge crowd of ticket holders for the New York Philharmonic performance. As there were no student tickets, my companion and I opted to get a quick bite to eat at Ollie's. (He, visiting New York for the first time, later that evening understandably threw up from the shrimp lo mein.)

So we're foraging our way through the crowd, when suddenly I feel a small fist punch the side of my leg. At first I passed it off as an accidental brush, but when it started to sting, I realized it could only have been intentional. I turned, and standing against a large column at the edge of the crowd, was a small angry homeless woman. And she was glaring straight at me.

She and I became acquainted back in April on the 2 train. You see, I was talking the subway uptown at around 2am, when this troll-lady hobbled into the car with a few large bags and an unmistakable smell of cat piss. She looked at me, and mumbling some voodoo homeless mumbo jumbo, punched me IN MY BOOB. She just up and punched me! A nearby good Samaritan woman confronted the homeless woman, shouting, "If you punch her again, you're going to get one from me! You don't punch!"

What luck that two souls can reunite in such a crowded, lonely place as Manhattan. It's incidences like these that can make me truly understand the work of Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David.