I thought twice… I thought thrice…

“Should I call out her name? What if it is not her?”

The moment I saw her walking into the airplane aisle, I thought she looked like my teammate Vicki. But the challenge was she had a big mask on and I just could not see enough facial features to come to a conclusive judgment.

What was even more interesting was that instead of going past me, she stopped near me and started putting her luggage up. And then sat down in my row one seat over on the other side of the aisle. She was trying to put her luggage up. Seeing her taking a few moments, I got up to help her. But by that time, she had already put the suitcase in. I sat down.

She looked at the passenger behind her and apologized “I am not tall enough”. And for the life of me I could not figure out whether the voice matched the one I have heard in Zoom calls and the couple of times I have talked to her directly.

I looked across my row. Her face was against the bright light from the window. The contour of her face did not help me much – I have not spent that much time with her. And then, there was the mask, of course.

My mind kept going back to a couple of months back when in a similar fashion, a gentleman sat down next to me and started talking to me mistaking me for one of his friends. And of course, I was trying to figure out how did I know that person. I figured my memory was failing me. We had a great laugh later and have become friends. In fact, I am friends with his son now too!!

Got busy with some office work and completely forgot about the lady till the boarding was completed and we had to shut down our laptops. Looked at her again. Still not sanguine.

Then an idea flashed across my mind. I texted her. You can follow the text message in the picture.

Turns out it was indeed Vicki Thomas. She was going home from Chicago and was connecting thru Atlanta. I was headed home too from our Chicago office!

Of course we had a great laugh. Took a selfie (which I am terrible at) after getting down.