The Amazing Shrinking Planet

I stroll across an unusually green campus yesterday en route to a meeting with my Study Abroad group. We are heading to Peru soon. It’s hot, and I scramble to make a pit stop at the departmental office where a box of new Flip cameras awaits. The cameras are for an ongoing video and photography project, and I speedily pick them up now in an attempt to squeeze every last minute out of this shrinking lemon of a day.

Glancing to the left outside the building, I see three young men sheltered under a Russian olive tree, and one of them looks astonishingly similar to the guy I’d wrongly profiled as a terrorist on board my May Lufthansa flight to Spain via Frankfurt. (For those of you who read the story of the presumed terrorist, you’ll recall that the man proved to be a harmless but nervous flyer with a penchant for Disney films like Bolt).

It’s him. I’m sure of it. But can it be him? Is it just my imagination working overtime, trying to pick up a summer shift or two in these topsy-turvy economic times?

I make a deal. I’ll head into the main office and back, and if the Bolt fan is still here, then I’ll make contact. Heck, I’m already late.

Box of Flip cameras in hand after the office rendezvous, I return to the Russian olive and see that now four young men are huddled around the bench stationed neatly below the welcome shade of the tree. They’re likely on break from a summer school class.

And so I promptly make my move. Seconds later, I find myself speaking aloud to a young, dark haired, smiling man of around 20 years of age:

Excuse me, I know this may sound strange, but were you recently on board a Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt? My speech is fast, I’ve hastily down shifted to a New Jersey dialect.

Nervously smiling, he replies: I’m sorry, but my English is not so good, I am an international student from Saudi Arabia. Still smiling. I wonder if he’s scared of me.

It’s him! I give it a second shot, this time much slower, and add: I remember you from a Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt in May. Was that you? Back in May?

With aid from his friends, he tells me that indeed, it was him on the flight! He was headed to Saudi Arabia and shares how I, too, looked strangely familiar.

I explain that I’m a professor here on campus. Has he ever taken a geography course?

No.

Would you like to?

Sure. (Though I suspect he could teach me a thing or two about geography).

We introduce ourselves and shake hands. And just like that, I am speaking with the young man and his friends about their futures, about life in Colorado, about Saudi Arabia, and I am late, oh so late, for an appointment that is designed to prepare my own students for an educational, cultural, experience abroad. Under the hot Colorado sun, the irony lies naked at my feet.

Did I tell him I thought he was a terrorist? No.

Did I learn something from all this? Uh, yes.

The Bolt loving terrorist is now stalking me.

Kidding.