Nod Pals
blogA nod pal is someone you see every day on your walk or cycle to work, someone who you pass at almost exactly the same place every morning.
The first time you see them, you don’t pay any attention.
The second time, you unconsciously think “oh look there’s that person from yesterday.”
The third time, you half-consciously assess whether you could be nod pals with such a person.
The fourth time, one of you might offer a weak smile.
The fifth time, the person who offered the smile will scan their face for recognition. If there is none, you know that they are not in the nodding fraternity. If they smile, you know that you’ve made a bond.
The sixth time, one of you nods and the other does the same. You are now nod pals and will now have some crumb of human connection to look forward to on the long journey to the office.
My current nod pal is an African chap, who followed the nod pal rules to the letter until day six when instead of nodding, he raised an arm aloft like a black power salute to which I — cycling perilously on the icy path — felt obliged to mirror. It was a satisfying exchange (especially as it crossed the cyclist/walker prejudicial divide).
Rob was saying on Friday that he wanted to seduce a woman over the course of several years using the nod pal procedure. This is conceivable, but there is a Platonic purity to the nod pal relationship that would tend to prevent such a travesty.
Before the African chap, I had a few nod pals (both cyclists) — there was the old woman who zoomed by whilst say “good morning” and a man in spectacles, shorts, and fluorescent tabard who had obstinately ignored me until I stopped to help him after he had had a fall. The next day he finally acknowledged my nod.
When I explained the nod pal to Tim, he raised the possibility that the whole phenomena was just inside my head and that the other cyclists were only humouring me. But that couldn’t be true, could it?