You again?

Having lived in this town now for 25 years (yikes!) and having moved two kids through the public school system from grades one through twelve, I feel like there are a fair number of people here that I know. Indeed, I have been told (shouted at, in fact): you know more people in Madison than you know in Warsaw, Poland, your *beloved homeland,* don’t you? DON’T YOU?? I’ll at least say that it’s a tie.

So two days ago I ran into a former neighborhood friend whom I haven’t seen for a long long time (she’d moved to another neighborhood). We stood between the grind-your-own- peanut butter and the pick-your-own-dried-herbs sections of Whole Foods and chatted for a long while.

But then, lo and behold, I was waiting at Brocach for my dinner companions to arrive and there she was again – sitting next to the only other free table in the room. Do I go up and awkwardly catch up on the last two days? Do I tell the maitre d’ to please seat me anywhere but close to her? What’s the right and proper thing to do? God, I hate these socially awkward situations!