A Chapter in my Antisocial Life

Getting off the sidewalk, I went over to the bench sitting under a small tree with sparse leaves providing shade.  There were actually three benches all next to each other, and I took the one on the left.  Sitting on the bench's right side and setting my small strap-bag down to my left, I took in the view of the beach in front of me.  Although the distant sky just above the ocean's horizon was bluish-gray and cloudy, the sky became a deeper and more beautiful blue as you looked further up to where the Sun was.  Sparse, wispy clouds accompanied that deeper blue.

As this was happening, a car had parked on the side of the road just behind me.  Several cars were also parked on the side of the road for several of the beach goers, but this one in particular had parked right behind the row of benches.  Not turning around, I could hear the doors opening and the chatter of a young woman and an older woman behind me.
"Do you see this picture?"
"Is that your dad?"
"No, do you see this?"
"That looks like your dad but with hair."
"Maybe it is my dad.  Do you see this guy though? They call this guy the Buddha Boy.  He survived a year with out food or water.  He just meditated the whole time."
Bullshit, I thought half-jokingly and half-skeptically in my head.  Looking into later, it turns out it's an actual thing.

The people from the car came around the right side of the benches, opposite where I was, and two older, portly women sat on the right-most bench.  They both looked of some Asian descent, though the one sat farthest from me was particularly tanned with short, straight brown-dyed(?) hair. The one closest to me was pale with dark hair tied up into a bun on the top of her head, and wore black with something that looked like a purple shawl with some kind of white pattern.  She had with her a plastic bag with the logo of a popular chain restaurant and three Styrofoam food containers.  There were two other women who came around and stood in front of them, both looking to be in their mid to late 20s and tan.  Although the older women were dressed in more covered clothes, the younger women were both wearing tanks tops and jean shorts.  One of the women in a purple tank top with long black hair looked somewhat well-endowed, so I kept my eyes glued to the ocean's horizon in case they decided to wander around irresponsibly.  From her voice, the other young woman in an orange tank top and long blond-dyed hair was probably the one talking about the Buddha Boy.

From my strap-bag, I took out a plastic container housing two dinner rolls I had packed that morning, spread with peanut butter and strawberry jelly.  As I was taking bites out of my dinner rolls, the women continued to converse about something, most of it I don't remember.  The only thing I recall was one of the young women asked about where the bathroom was, which was over to the left down the sidewalk.  At some point however, the young women left and walked down the sidewalk past my gaze, possibly towards said bathroom.  I continued looking toward the horizon after they'd gone, and I was vaguely aware that the older women were talking about something.  I think I heard a few foreign words/sentences being used, but didn't really hear anything specific.

Then in some kind of Asian accent, "Dylan," is what I heard (which sounded like Deee-lan I think).  At least I think I did.  It's possible that because it's my name, I have some kind of response to anything that sounds close to it.  However accompanying that, I could see movement from the ladies in my peripheral vision.  I turned to my right, and the older women both appeared to be waving at me.  However, despite both these two occurrences, I didn't react.  It was like I doubted what was happening.  People say that I have a good memory, I like to think my memory's pretty decent myself, and yet for the life of me, I could not recognize the faces one park bench away in front of me.  I stared at their smiling faces for what felt like four seconds, and looked away, choosing to look back at the horizon again.  Part of it was because I felt like I was simply misunderstanding what had happened, misheard what I thought was my name and such.  It wasn't the first time something like this has happened.  The other part of it was that I just didn't feel like engaging them for whatever reason.  I really couldn't say why.  Maybe it's because I didn't recognize them, and therefore felt zero prerogative or benefit from talking to them.  Not to mention I also don't like talking to most people.

You would think at this point I would feel a bit uncomfortable or awkward.  Heck, even *I* would think I'd feel uncomfortable or awkward.  Two people (probably) tried to engage me, I seemingly ignored them, and I'm still sitting a park bench's distance away from them.  What I felt was nothing.  Just curiosity.  I sat there, still eating my dinner rolls, vaguely trying to dig through my brain to see if anything vaguely resembling a memory of them was there.  I thought about the older people who would show up during family Christmas parties, but none of them looked like them.  I tried to recall any of my friend's grandparents or older acquaintances, but I hardly remember meeting anyone that old that I didn't remember.  Not to mention I doubt they'd remember my name.  They only possibility I could come up with at the time was that they were teachers I had ages ago in preschool.  You would think I might look too different from back then to be recognizable, but back when I was in community college heading to class, an older woman came up to me saying my name.  I looked at her, and although I couldn't remember her name, I recognized her as someone who worked at my elementary school.  Her face was one I hadn't thought about since I left that school, but she had recognized me, and even remember my name.  The thing is, I also look very young and probably haven't changed much.

I looked back again at the woman with the purple shawl.  She was staring at me as well, I think.  Or she was just staring at the flies she was swatting away, coming for the food she had brought.  It was hard to tell.  Her face was either in and "at rest" expression, or she was frowning at me.  I stared at her for another four seconds, trying to pull anything from her face, but I was once again left with nothing and looked away.

Once I was done with my dinner rolls, from my bag, I pulled out a Ricola.  I wanted something sweet and mouth-moisturizing after the dinner rolls, and this was the closest thing I had to that on short notice.  I had actually received this seven days ago from an eighty year old woman.  I had been on my walk, going up a mountain covered in residential neighborhoods and expensive-looking homes.  As I began passing by an old woman standing on grass with her dog, she began talking seemingly to herself about how she forgot to bring a plastic bag (her dog had evacuated, so to speak), but she then turned to me.  I decided to stop and listen to her, as she talked about how you forget things like this and such at the age of eighty.  I stood there comfortably with a smile, merely listening.  I felt no hurry or awkwardness then either strangely, and as she began looking for some leaves to cover her dog's waste, I contemplated for a few seconds either walking away and continuing on or helping her find a big enough leaf.  Although I felt she need no help in this, as there were a decent amount of leaves around from the tall tress lining the sidewalk, I decided to help.  Ultimately I was right, as she found what she needed pretty quickly, but before I left she said with a smile,

"Y'know, whenever I offer these to someone, they don't say yes or no, they just brush me off.  Here."
She handed me two Ricolas, and I took them happily, probably forgot to thank her and continued on my way.  I generally have a policy that if someone offers you something, I take it.  I have a working hypothesis that sometimes people offer you things like this out of politeness, but a lot of the times people sometimes feel bad when you turn them down.  It's like being rejected.  Or if it's help they're offering, they feel awkward not being able to help and being left to stand around.  That's the working hypothesis, at least.

Back in the present, I sat there still in thought.  I heard the older women talking, but couldn't here anything they were talking about.  However, given my paranoid nature I assumed they were talking about me, but it didn't really bother me.  At some point the two younger women came back, and were talking to the older women.  Again, I couldn't really hear much.  I looked up at the sky, admiring the blue.  The wispy clouds and the deep blue felt like a world far away.  I'd sure like to be far away, any day of the week.  I pulled out my phone and took pictures.  Looking back at the sky, it had lost its luster.  This has happened before, where I took a picture of scenery I had been admiring, and all of a sudden, I felt nothing towards that scenery anymore.  I might as well have been staring at nothing, or staring past it.  I felt like I was trying to see something there, which only made it less enjoyable.  It was as if I felt that since I had the picture, I no longer needed to admire the thing in front of me.  Despite that, I continue to take pictures of scenery like this.  I couldn't tell you why.

Eventually the four women got back in their car and left, leaving me to sit and wonder who the heck those older women were.  I sat there for awhile, not in any hurry.  In hindsight, when those two older ladies were waving at me, I could have turned behind me to make sure there wasn't anyone there, and turned back to them and pointed at myself with a questioning look.  Of course, that would also mean I would have to talk to them.  Still, the trade-off would've been I would know who they are.  For a split-second, the more deceptive motive of also getting to know those young women crossed my mind, but in the next split-second, I thought,
"nah, I can't even pretend to be interested enough."
My anti-socialness knows no bounds.

I pulled out my phone again to look at those photos I just took to test something.  I stared at the photos for a bit, then looked back up at the sky.  Some of it luster had returned.  It was kinda nice.  I got up and left.  It was weird that there was this gap in my memory that I had and they didn't.  Possibly I had done something in the past that allowed for them to remember not only me, but my name.  Or who knows, maybe they knew of me through an acquaintance, seen a picture of me, but never met me before.

There's also something strange I go through sometimes when I remember something I had forgotten.  Like when I saw the older woman at community college.  It was like a gap had been filled.  Or a part of me lit up that had been dormant.  Some years ago, I was walking through a large bookstore near this beach, and I made eye contact with a Japanese girl about my age walking in my direction past me.  We locked eyes with no expression, but as we were getting close she looked down, biting her lower lip, and walked past me.  As I was on the bus ride from the bookstore, it finally hit me that the Japanese girl was a physics classmate of mine during my last year at high school maybe 2-3 years prior to that moment.  She was a friend of a friend for awhile, but we never interacted during our time at high school until that year in that class sitting next to each other, during which I felt she was quite friendly.  I couldn't tell you why, but it really struck me as peculiar that I had forgotten about her like that.

Possibly like with those older women waving at presumably me, something within me had judged that I didn't need to remember her that clearly.  I don't know why, but I felt that chances were high that I'd never know who those older women were.  As I walked away from that row of benches underneath that sparsely leaved tree and the view of the bench, I held a small bit of regret.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1M12ylK8KO9ZofBSn29KxA47LdekeX3Os