Big city, small world

Even in a metropolis like Sydney there are some strangers you regularly bump into. There's this one guy I always used to see at Magic: The Gathering tournaments. That in itself isn't unusual as the tourneys comprised 80-90% regulars. But when I stopped playing M:TG competitively, he kept popping up - in pubs, at gigs, in dorkgeeknerd stores. One cold, rainy afternoon, I even saw the dude walking down the main street of my suburb amid a black-clad group that could have been students, squatters, vampire junkies, real junkies or all of the above. Today, I spied him again, looking the worse for wear as he busked in the CBD. He was improvising poorly on a white recorder and had seemingly few coins to show for it. My first thought was: there's that bloody guy again. But then I was struck with a strange feeling of kinship going back to the Magic tourneys in which we'd both competed (though never against each other). I gathered my pocket change and dropped it onto his outspread duffle coat. He said, "Thank you." And I walked away. It was only later I realised a kinder thing I could have done. It would have begun like this: "G'day, mate. Didn't I used to see you..."