Earlier, I wrote about the surreal experience of seeing someone who looked exactly like a girl I sort of knew from high school, who was most definitely seeing-eye-dog-blind in those days, and who had gone off to attend some school in Boston. This girl not only did not appear to have difficulty seeing, but she was also decidedly not situated in some Boston school, having enrolled in my neuroscience class and having attended it regularly. On top of this, I discovered soon after that she works in the same lab in which I signed up to work this semester (for the one requisite credit hour to graduate with a BA in psych). The resemblance was just so uncanny, I thought, that either I was misremembering what Shelly looked like, or this was the same person.

Now I guess any sane, normal person would have simply gone up and asked her who she was, instead of blogging about it and/or mulling over the problem in her head while trying to pay attention during neuroscience lectures. I definitely thought about it, but it seemed weird to me, especially since I didn’t know her all that well in her blind days. And, of course, there’s not really any way she would recognize me; so it would be like one of those awkward moments when you remember someone and say hi, and they have no idea who you are, but worse!

Today she was in the lab, and said hi, and I said hi back and finally asked her name. “Shelly Thompson,” she replied. Aha! It is her! I then proceeded to say something about how I thought we were in a psych class together, but I think she thought I was talking about the neuroscience class we’re both in now, as opposed to in high school, because immediately afterwards she asked me where I was from. Then the subject got changed somehow.

Doh. How do I backtrack now, and point out to her that I knew her from before, without sounding creepy for not having already mentioned it? I guess I could just never bring it up, but I really would like to know how she got herself un-blindified, and what became of her dog Comet (another mystery: almost every seeing-eye-dog I’ve met happens to be named Comet. Why is this?). Why is she here, and not Boston? What happened in these past five crazy years?

I guess I, like most people, have this idea that people stay exactly the same as you left them. Especially people whom I don’t know too well, and with whom I haven’t kept in touch. The blind girl stays blind, the cousin remains a chubby infant, the sullen bully still shoves people into lockers. I know I’ve changed a lot in the last five years, so why do I think it’s weird when others show they’re capable of the same? Human nature can be awfully provincial sometimes.