Unlikely Meeting Place

Since I am using highways everyday, it has been ages I don’t really feel the bore stiff from getting stuck in a real traffic jam. Yesterday was peculiar to my ordinary traveling. It took me two-and-a-half hours to get to office, with one meeting too many to skip. I could see the humdrum looks in the faces of other drivers when it took some 30 minutes to travel only less than 200 meters once passed the Jalan Duta toll. Only today I realized some processions were going on at Batu Caves for Thaipusam that the customary users of MRR2 would instead detour at Sungai Buluh toll, just to pile up at the exit.

I heard a car, black-colored BMW 328i, honking, diagonally to my left with merely a car-length behind as I was in the rightmost lane after passing through SmartTag inching my way. And I knew it was me he meant for he kept honking when I turned my face away – in his effort to lock eyes and get noticed. Quick assessing on my mind to look for what wrong I did. “Am I too close for comfort with other car?”, “He spot my broken tail light?“, “Is he the guy who got pissed off with my stern voice when he jumped queue at Dunkin’ Donut at Jejantas Sungai Buluh the day before?” or “Am I mistaken for someone else?”. No! Nothing!

While with little consternation I was harbouring, a smile in his face gave me clue. Great resemblance of the very face I knew some yonks ago – last seen when we bid farewell in school. It became certain when clarion features of him matched the input in my geriatric and tired database. If not for the kind of fortuity we had, we’d have had brushed shoulders in the streets, perhaps exchanging a punch or two over scuffles but we wouldn’t have noticed for who the other party was. The old school alumni sticker proudly displayed at the back screen of the car had done a bit of justice to me.

I tried not to move as he tried to catch up with me to be on my left. I rolled down the window almost simultaneously as he did. It was almost at one go we confirmed each other’s schooling days’ call name and hearty laughter followed.

That laugh has brought back to the time when I carried him on the wheelbarrow in the peach dark of the night playing silly, racing with another wheelbarrow team in the football field while we were supposed to be in bed sleeping. Making funs on the possibilities of the hostel wardens may drop a bombshell on us. We spent time laughing and rolling in the grass over our foolish acts more than we were actually racing. We laughed more than it was funny. We cracked at any slightest tingle. It was not even funny when we hit the goal post, but we were still laughing like mad. Even until this day I could still laugh as much as my kids had when I relate the story to them.

When you are in the driver’s seat and you’re talking to the car driver on your left, it’s a bit awkward on your part. Hardly could hear one another. Only after a few shouts so then we realized we were still as silly as when we were racing using the wheelbarrows those days, I then asked his mobile number.

I was fully aware that when after too long a halt and the car in front start moving that creates space in front you, the driver at the back would be itching for you to move even a yard or two. I could see a gentleman in his Honda Accord behind me started showing choleric expression in his face when enough space for one car in front of me.

It was time to roll up the window and start calling up on the mobile. May be this week neither one of us is in position to make arrangement for a meet up but very soon we will.




GAB: Old friends are incomparable to the newly-met friends. What more when they are childhood friends. And I wonder how the friendships like when it is through the net? Chatroom or Blogosphere! Any idea?