Fate

On our way home from Arkansas we had a 2 hour - that turned into a 4 hour - delay in Dallas, TX.

In an attempt to kill time, we decided to stop in each airport store that we came across. In one of those such stores we were browsing when I looked up and something caught my attention. It took a minute or two for my brain to assess the situation and realize that what had just caught my attention was 2 ghosts from our military past.

Without thought, I turned around, told Mike to "don't ask questions just follow me" and led him out of the store.

When we got out I explained the situation.

During Mike's last deployment there was one marine who had gone with him who he has told me multiple times he hoped never to see again. This guy is a 1st Lt. with whom Michael had a yelling, rip-roaring falling out. Basically, since Michael was his commanding officer but only 1 rank above him, this guy wasn't respecting his authority. He was there with his wife who had been my facebook friend until at some point during the deployment she had mysteriously deleted me. We had never had any kind of falling out. I assume she was just taking what happened with her husband and mine and translating that into her own personal life.

In any case, I think we can all agree that they weren't the people who we hoped to run into at the airport.

The funny thing was that for whatever reason, fate stepped in and decided that we absolutely were going to run into them. Because, no matter how hard we tried to avoid them, there they were.

First we discovered they were on our flight. Then we realized they were only sitting a few rows ahead of us. Despite both of these facts, though, they hadn't seen us -- or possibly they were pretending they didn't see us -- who knows.

We thought we were in the clear of having an awkward run-in with them after we got our bags and successfully walked out of the airport without crossing their path. Then, we flagged down our bus to take us to our long-term parking and had a seat. A few moments later, though, the bus stopped again to load more passengers. Wouldn't you know those two people boarded our bus and took the only seats available - the ones across from us, facing us.

Can you say AWKWARD?

I will probably never know or understand why, but for some odd reason it was fate. No matter how hard we tried to avoid it we were meant to run into those people that day.

**Added Later
To answer your questions... yes we spoke to them. Of course we did. They got on the bus still trying not to make eye contact, but Mike patted the seat across from us and said something to the extent of "Have a seat" thus breaking the ice. The two of them chit-chatted the entire bus ride to the parking lot, mostly catching each other up on mutual marine corps contacts. There was no formal resolution, but I suppose it was good for them to see each other in a non-stress, non-deployment situation. What seems so earth shattering and intense in a living-on-top-of-each-other-for-7-months deployment situation does not seem to be quite as big of a deal in the 'real world'. As for me, what I got out of the situation is next time I run into someone I'm not too keen on seeing, I will waste no time, walk right up to them, and say, "Howdy" !