stop along the path of no direction

whilst perusing the gallery o’ conditioners of
air,
a hand comes flying up toward him,
insistently shaking & uttering the man’s name
as if he is supposed to remember---
“john doe here, how are you?” remarks the man,
a salesman with tag on shirt,
quick on the chase of a prospective customer over
their way from the appliances to the
big screen TVs &
a bit bewildered, looking up to recall the face
possibly, a face to match a name already said &
suddenly the man being handshaked
remembers this guy from his
teenage years---
the man had flowing red hair back then,
said his brother was a supermodel &
no doubt, he had gotten the residual ladies as a
result,
heard back then that he had a great romance with
Lucy who went Swimming quite a bit in north
Dakota &
though his hair had been shaved, he was still
that tall skinny red haired guy whose eyes bulged
out of his head, regardless of how what kind of
chemicals his mind was racing with
at any given time---
but he saw the look in the handshaked, vaguely
remembering guy’s face,
something of an anti-social behavior,
something in the way of “i don’t really give a
flying fuck,”
and he retracted into a place of insecurity---
the handshaked man doing his best to be polite
remarked,
“hey, how’s it goin’?” &
the skinny red haired john doe said with
embarrassment, “i’m selling appliances---
but that’s not what i’m really doing. i mean,
i’m working on something---going to school,
gonna work in forestry---yeah, that’s what i
want to do.”

so the handshaked man nodded & smiled,
said “sounds good”---
being cut off by the john doe---
“are you gonna be around the store for a bit?”
sick of the whole situation &
not wanting to reminisce about times that
hold absolutely no significance whatsoever anymore,
the handshaked man declined &
as he walked out of the store
he wondered just why someone would flail themselves on
a person from the past,
only to retract in embarrassment,
before even finding out just what it is that
the other party was doing with their own life.