Hello is other people

I see her coming towards us. Has she seen me seeing her? Probably. I can’t pretend I haven’t seen her just in case she saw me seeing her. Ok, be normal. Look down, look down, and look up… now. We smile as we walk past each other.

“Hi”

“Hi”

My daughter asks: “Who’s that woman, mummy?”

“Just another person that I’m in a hi relationship with.”

She knows exactly what I mean.

This particular woman was on the sweet stall with me a few weeks ago at the school disco. We spoke for about 4 minutes about crisps and Wham bars and how much to charge for the fake Twixes from Aldi. I think she told me her name, but I couldn’t tell you what it is. Since then I’ve said hi to her about 16 times.

Another one’s approaching.

“Oh hi”

“Morning. You alright?”

Not a question. Not a walking past question for Christ’s sake. Does it require an answer?

“Yeah, good thanks.” I say to the back of her head as she returns to the safety of her phone.

“That’s the woman from the bus stop”, my daughter comments.

“Yeah”

We keep going. By the time I’ve dropped my children off at school, I’ve said hi to at least 12 people. About 5 of them are people I actually know – friends or kind-of-friends. The rest are just people I’ve had one or two interactions with in the past and to whom I’m now forever bound in an endless purgatory of ‘hi’.

It’s not that I mind saying hi to people. It’s just – when does it end? There’s one woman whose children don’t even go to our school. We’d see each other in the mornings, us going one way, her and her children going the other way. Everything was fine between us – because there was no us – I’d had literally zero interaction with her. Then, one morning, out of the blue, she decided to say ‘hello’ to me. And that was it. I was unwittingly drawn into yet another interminable hi relationship. That was over a year ago and we’re still going strong.

And this is the crux: you can’t start saying hi and then just stop. It doesn’t work like that. And you can’t do the thing where you pretend you haven’t seen each other, because both of you know that you have. You’ve entered into a relationship, of sorts. One you can’t leave; one with no middle or end, just an eternal stuck record of awkward beginnings.

I go into Sainsbury’s and pick up a bunch of bananas. There are two women restocking the fridge section, deep in conversation. I walk past as one of them says: “at the end of the day, incest is incest.”

I stare at the biscuits for a while before reaching up to take a pack of Border’s Dark Chocolate Gingers – and that’s when it hits me. 

It’s the anticipation. The walking part. Sometimes you clock each other when they’re 50 metres away. That’s a long time to be waiting for a pointless interaction that nobody wants. Do you look away? Look down? Keep looking at them (unthinkable). Then, when the moment comes to say ‘hi’, should you pretend you’ve just seen them at that very moment? How do you time it? Do you look up when they’re passing or just before? Should you mix it up – say something different once in a while? Or is ‘hi’ fine? Maybe I should expand what I’m saying, take these monosyllabic relationships to the next level? No, that’s a bad idea. And then there’s the guilt, the icky awkwardness of feeling like you’re making them say hi to you, when you don’t even want to say hi, you just don’t want them to think you’re rude. It’s the ultimate vicious circle. A rigmarole with no end. Dante’s first circle of hell. I walk to the till. 

“Hiya luv”. It’s the woman with the Lancashire accent.

I smile, “Hi.”

I put my bananas and biscuits down. “Ooh I luv these biscuits – with a cup of tea. Good for dunking.”

She’s right of course. Borders Gingers are perfect for dunking. I say thanks, take my things and walk out. She calls after me: “Ta-ra luv”. 

It’s stopped raining. I don’t want to go home, to my desk, to work, but that’s where my feet are taking me. I have the sudden urge to be by a river, to look out at water. As if in answer, a giant puddle swells at the corner of the kerb, merging road and pavement into one. I guess this’ll have to do.