It was the final leg of my trip to two cities while not being able to talk. I sat myself in my airplane seat and started checking all the emails from the day on my phone as the rest of the passengers kept boarding. I had already flashed my note to the lady sitting next to me that I am unable to speak. She had nonchalantly gone back to her knitting after reading the note.

A bit later, somewhat errr… chalantly, she tapped on my shoulder. I looked up to see that she was pointing my finger to somebody standing next to us. There was Hunt Jackson – smiling at me. We have worked together not once, but twice beore!! He was aware I could not talk. We had exchanged messages a few days back on his birthday. I smiled back, waved at him and mouthed “I did not know you were in this flight.” Soon, he had move with the queue as he went to his seat.

Back to emails it was. A few minutes later, a message notification came thru “Are you on a Delta flight from Denver to Atlanta right now?” My first reaction was to guess that Hunt’s message was delayed in reaching me. He must have texted me before he asked my next neighbor to call me.

Something struck me as odd – the sender’s name was rather small. In my contacts, Hunt’s name is written as “Charles Huntington Hunt Jackson”. Went back to the message. It was from “Amy Smith”!!! I know her from the place we had worked together before! And recently, we had talked at length during her birthday. (I was still talking then).

I furiously started messaging her back. “Why, yes! Are you too?”

She was. She had seen me. But was not sure if it was me. In her defense, we had not seen each other for over a decade.

“I should have called your name out when I passed you.” she wrote.

I explained to her that he might not have made a difference since I cannot talk. But I wrote that I will wait for her when we deplane.

Which I did.

We walked to the baggage carousel together, she filling me in on her new job!

It was so great to see Amy after such a long time!! I need to do this again though. There were a lot of questions I wanted to ask her but could not!

But, what is the chance that you run into two ex-colleagues in the same flight!

You want to hear the real coincidence? All three of us were in the same company once for some time!!!