james

I walked into the cafeteria and saw someone walking out. In quarter of a second, I glanced his face and my memory ran like crazy.
"Hey! Did you graduate from Penn State?" I did something I rarely rarely do, which is shouting out to a stranger. Well, he may have been a stranger if my memory of him was wrong.
'Yeah...' He stopped and looked at me with a puzzling expression.
"Sorry about this. I graduated from Penn State too. And you just look so familiar to me. I am Toby's student." I said so because anyone who ever took Toby's class would never ever forget Toby, who is one of the best teachers I have ever met, and also my academia father.
Soon I added my name to the introduction without any hope that this person would recognize me at all. He provided his hand, and I shaked his hand, and he told me his name.
'I'm James,' Oh I thought it was George, so close, and he continued 'I was so-an-so's student.'
"Right, you were in Kinesiology." I of course remember he was in Kinesiology.
Motor control is a shared interest between cognitive psychology and kinesiology. James and I took a cognitive psychology class together back in 2003, I believe, which was not Toby's but David's. Anyway, James was cute, and he is still cute or cuter.
We briefly exchanged our recent professional lives while I was thinking "What a good-looking guy!"

James. I must have a thing for this name. Purely coincidents? Or it is simply such a common name.
In Taiwan, people get an English name which usually has nothing to do with the original Chinese name. It is just something we Taiwanese do. Back there when I was twelve, my first love affair was with a classmate named James. He had beautiful fingers and kissable lips (although I did not kiss him because it was not ethical to kiss a boy who had an official girlfriend). My boyfriend in college years also had this same English name. Now my star you-know-who goes by this name in the English-speaking world.
I like James in my lab. He is a great kid with a kind of humor that I love: low-key, semi-sarcastic, soft voice with a sharp point.
I like James in my postdoc group. He is one of the smartest people I've ever known in my generation. Funny and smart. Thinks so quickly and critically like Toby.

Oh! I know why I thought his name was George. He looks like the George in the movie "My Best Friend's Wedding". Isn't he cute?
Mama and I used to watch this movie again and again whenever HBO played it. Funny thing is that I remember the character's name George but cannot recall what Julia Roberts' or Cameron Diaz' charactor's name.
Why? Because this guy was cute, and this actor's name was never in my system, or he played a gay man? I love gay people and cute guys :)
Alright, this random encounter should be it. It being that my little crush was over.
However, it was so nice that I could be suddenly pulled back to years ago in the middle of my busy day exchanging 20 emails with Toby.

Oh! Why I remembered James? Perhaps exchanging email with Toby primed me!
Alright, I gotta stop applying psychology terms to my foolish self-analysis. Good night, people, Friday is coming.