A Mistaken Wave Back Is A Binding Promise, And I Intend To Keep It

Every adult knows the moment. A stranger across a parking lot raises a hand in greeting. You raise yours back. Then you realize the greeting was meant for a man standing directly behind you holding a casserole.¹

Most people lower the hand. They pretend to be checking for rain. This is cowardice, and I will not take part in it.

The dignified course, the only course, is total commitment. A wave returned is a contract. Having entered into it, I owe the stranger (let us call him my old friend) the full performance of a friendship. So I jogged over.²

Jogging is not enough on its own. A jog without a hug is merely an approach, and an approach invites questions. I therefore hugged him warmly, with the two back-pats customary between men who have weathered things together.³

What had we weathered? Here I was forced to improvise, and I believe I acquitted myself well. I recalled the summer we rebuilt that canoe. I asked after his brother, whom I described as "still the tall one." I mentioned Ohio meaningfully, twice.⁴

"Once you've waved, you're in it," said Marjorie Pell, 61, a retired crossing guard from Duluth who once waved at me in a hardware store and has since been unable to get rid of me. "That's just manners." I find her argument unanswerable.⁵

Critics will say I have gone too far. I would remind them that I have gone only as far as the wave required. When my old friend's niece mentioned a family barbecue on the 22nd, it would have been the height of rudeness for a returning old friend not to RSVP. I did so by card, by email and, to be safe, in person at his front door. I am bringing a potato salad and a framed photograph of the canoe.⁶

In fairness, the forecast for the 22nd calls for scattered showers, and I would not want the weather to feel it has been characterized unfairly. I therefore contacted the sky over the original parking lot for comment. It remained overcast, which I am treating as a measured and reasonable response. I have added it to the guest list. Someone has to make the effort, and it is clearly not going to be the people inside the house.⁷

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¹ The man's name is Doug. Doug did not wave at the columnist.

² Doug took several steps backward during this portion.

³ Doug did not pat back. Doug has never rebuilt a canoe.

⁴ Doug has no brother and has never been to Ohio. At the time, he asked, "Sorry, who are you?"

⁵ Ms. Pell has since asked the columnist to shop at a different hardware store.

⁶ Doug has asked the columnist, in writing, to stop. The note, left under the columnist's windshield wiper, reads in full: "I don't know you. Please don't come Saturday. — Doug." The 22nd is a Saturday.

⁷ The sky has not RSVP'd. Doug's family has returned the columnist's card unopened, along with the canoe photograph, which is of a kayak.