I had the occasion to have a brief chat with a former colleague today.  It was polite, brief, and did I mention polite?  Or that it was brief?  It was all four of those things.

And no, I’m not referring to you.

The French have a great word for someone who is not un ami but who is not un étranger either. That person is un camarade.  You’re happy to be with them when you’re with them, but when you’re not with them, you’re also happy.  They are a movie on a hotel room TV that you’ll watch instead of trying to sleep.  Better than nothing, but not better.

They move in and out of your life like cars in traffic.  They leave no traces.  You don’t need to remove them from your speed dial or holiday card list, since they were never there to start with.  Which is just swell.

There’s a word for feeling this way: vergesslichkeitsfreude, for the pleasure derived from forgetfulness.  Crack that one out next time you’re hanging with the cats from Oxford and watch them blink a few times…before you catch your bus and forget all of their names, if you ever knew them in the first place.  It won’t matter, because they’ll be glad to see you next time, like a scene in a movie you’ve seen a hundred times in a hundred hotel rooms that you’ll watch again and again.

And yes, I made that word up.