To nod or not to nod

A random blog entry. This happened to me earlier today.

I was on an early shift at work, had finished my first job of the day and was going for a well-earned coffee. I was going to a particular coffee shop in T5 which was right down the other end of the building to where I was, just because their drinks are always hot rather than the tepid stuff that you normally get anywhere else plus the fact that it has a nice quiet area to sit down in. So I got there, ordered, and waited at the end of the counter whilst the drink was being made. As I waited, I had a look towards the seating area to survey the scene. I vaguely noticed some guy sat down, and he made some kind of nodding movement to someone behind me. I looked back at the counter to collect my coffee, but then realised that the guy might have actually been nodding at me. I looked back and saw that the guy was a colleage of mine but not one I'm particularly friendly with or anything, just an acquaintace. However, if he had indeed been nodding at me as a polite hello then I had just completely blanked him. Thus, he probably thought I was an arsehole.

As I looked back, his gaze kind of drifted back in my direction and this time he was definitely looking at me. Did he nod at me the first time? Or didn't he? Do I nod at him now? What if I nod at him but he didn't nod at me first? What if he did nod at me first and now I'm blanking him yet again? Did he not nod at me the first time and is now blanking me (in which case he's being an arsehole, but I'm doing the same thing so he thinks the same about me?)

I decided to nod. Just as I nodded, he started to look away again and raised his coffee to his lips. What an arsehole!! But at the last second he must have seen my nod, because he suddenly looked back at me and lowered his coffee, and nodded, and gave a kind of awkward smile, then quickly sipped his coffee and looked away.

I still don't know what actually happened. In any case, I could no longer sit down in the nice chairs as planned, so I had to take my coffee and walk all the way back to the other end of the terminal and drink it in the noisy restroom.