Today I discovered that I was within 30 feet of an acquaintance that I haven’t seen in several years, and it was all because of WiFi. I needed to check my email while I was out today and saw that my phone was telling me that there was an open (i.e. unsecured) WiFi hotspot around me. I don’t use a lot of mobile data but instead use free WiFi the vast majority of time. So I pulled up the WiFi connections list on my phone to look for the open connection. When I was looking at the list I saw the name “Caleb Azure’s iPhone”. I knew a guy named Caleb Azure who was an associate pastor in Green Bay years ago. He moved out to California a few years ago and I haven’t seen him since then. So I was a little surprised when I saw his name associated with a iPhone signal that was around me.
So I looked around and saw a guy sitting in a car across from me that looked pretty much like Caleb. Of course, it isn’t really very cool to knock on a stranger’s car window so I thought I would reach out to Caleb via the only contact I have with him anymore … Twitter.
@CalebAzure hey Caleb not sure if you remember me or not but I think you are sitting in a Ford Taurus across from me in my van. Is that you?
— Robert Terrell (@ratterrell) February 25, 2016
And then I waited. I checked my email, looked around, twiddled my thumbs, and waited for him to look up or respond. He didn’t. I decided to just get out and knock on his car window. So I got out of my van, started to walk towards his car, and then stopped and turned around when I saw him start talking on his phone. After all it isn’t nice to interrupt someone’s phone call. I tweeted him again.
@CalebAzure I got out of my van to say hey but then you/not you started talking on your phone and I thought it would be rude to interrupt.
— Robert Terrell (@ratterrell) February 25, 2016
So I got back into my minivan and waited. I checked Twitter, looked at the steps I had walked during the day, and listened to a podcast about the history of Christianity. I waited till it became awkward. I kept looking to see if he looked up. He didn’t. I finally decided that I should go. So I tweeted that if it were him that I just barely missed him.
@ratterrell @CalebAzure Hi Robert. Yup, that was me. Thought I saw you walk by. Thanks for the note. Sorry I didn't catch you.
— Caleb Azure (@CalebAzure) February 25, 2016
And as you can see from his tweet above he responded back 12 minutes later that it had actually been him. Small world and a weird way to discover that an acquaintance has moved back to Wisconsin.