Park Slope = New Jersey?

A few months ago I ran into a guy I used to work with, back when I worked for other people. We were both department heads at the company, although this was in 2000 when you could be 24 and a department head just because you'd seen a website once. The company met a slow, tedious and somewhat bloody demise, and everyone who worked there got flung into different industries or stuck on unemployment insurance and living in their parents' basement. The few remaining people who soldiered on in the Internet industry are still working in it today, and sometimes I encounter them on projects. This was the first time I ran into someone on the street, though.

I was unloading Milo from the car after a shopping trip to Fairway, when I saw a guy walking down the street who looked sort of familiar. I didn't have too much time to figure out who he was because I was mostly involved in trying to convince Milo not to fling himself up the stairs to our apartment building. But he'd apparently seen me too.

"Hana?" he asked.

I smiled, spent a few seconds trying to remember his name and where I knew him from, and then said hi back.

"Wow,'" he said, pointing at Milo. "I see things have changed for you." He said it in a way that made me think he'd previously viewed me as someone not only unlikely to reproduce, but maybe even someone who shouldn't reproduce. But given how I'd been back then, that was probably the vibe I'd given off. The last time I'd seen this guy Steven and I were dating, I was living in the East Village, and frequently had trouble making it into work by 10:30. Also I had hair that someone in the office (a straight man, amazingly) had once referred to as "New-York-fabulous."

And now I had on no makeup, hair pulled back in a ponytail held with a clip that only minutes before Milo had been chewing on, and ... um ... I think stretch yoga pants.

But back to this guy. He is a father. I know this because he was a father back when we worked together, which was unusual because most people in the Internet world in those days were swinging single people sleeping with their cubicle-mates. He had pictures of his kids up in his office, and he never went out with us for drinks. Also, he didn't live in Manhattan. From what I remembered, he lived in New Jersey.

"Do you live here?" I asked him while trying to wrangle a flailing Milo.

"Yes, just up the block." He motioned to an apartment building a few doors down from my own.

"Have you always lived here?" I asked.

"Yes," he said. "For about ten years now."

Which is to say, in my previous life when we'd worked together, this guy had lived in Park Slope and I had mentally filed it under "New Jersey." In other words, suburbia. Boring-land. Place where stupid people with stupid kids live with their stupid minivans.

"Well," I said. "I guess I'll see you around the neighborhood." Then I unloaded the groceries, got in the car, drove myself to Ecuador and moved in with a nomadic Grateful Dead tribute band. No I didn't. I took the groceries inside while my husband parked the car. I put my son down for a nap. Then I probably paid some bills and ordered stuff online from Target.

I've seen this guy around the neighborhood several times by now. I run into him at the park a lot. Sometimes at the playground. Sometimes hanging out at the Tea Lounge. We both have kids, you see. And so I have become my worst nightmare. So it goes.