People I have (barely) known

Something about moving 1600 miles away from your old home, and from the coast where most of your family lives, makes you think sometimes about the people that have come and gone from your life. Because when you move that far away from most of your friends, only the strong friendships survive. And really, that's fine. Honestly, I imagine that the people whose friendship has become fainter with distance--well, I think it would have become fainter with time, too, eventually.

But I've been thinking about other people, the kind of people who come in and out of your lives very briefly, the kind you never really get to know but who you remember for one reason or another. The ones you know hardly anything about--maybe you know only their first name, or only their last. You know almost nothing about their background or life circumstances. But you talked with them, chatted with them, had some sort of connection with them. You know those people?

Anyway, here are five such people from my life. People that I will likely never see again, not least because I don't even know how to get in touch with most of them, and also because I don't have the kind of relationship with them where I could call, if I did have their numbers, and be like, "So... what's up?"

1. Larry. He worked at the front desk of our apartment building in DC. He was also a musician and a music producer. He was really nice. He always chatted with me in the morning and told me to have a safe ride to work. He had dreadlocks and a really old car, and he wore very stylish, but not over the top, clothes. He lived in the building and every now and then we would see him with his girlfriend in the grocery store.
   
2. Ms. Larson. She worked at the prison training program and she was Montana's favorite. She was the one who brought Montana to meet us when we arrived at the prison for our dog interviews. When we were trying to decide between Montana and the other dog, she suggested that we take both, and we would have been tempted if it weren't for our then-apartment's pet weight limit. When we were in the go-home class and Montana was going through her commands with her inmate handler, Ms. Larson walked in the room and Montana saw her and immediately started whining to be able to go see her.
   
3. Matt and Tara. They lived next door to us in our DC apartment. They were about our ages, maybe a little closer to Torsten's age than mine. They were really friendly and the year they moved in, they left a bag of Lindt truffles on our door along with a holiday card. I would see them in the apartment gym sometimes and every now and then Matt and I would be on the same bus home from work.
   
4. Julie. We went to college together and graduated the same year, but barely knew each other. I had never even seen her until our senior year, when we had a class together. She always had interesting things to say and sometimes we whispered jokes to each other in class, or chatted afterward, with the vague idea that we'd get together sometime outside of class. We never did.
   
5. Connie. She brought her dog to the dog park that was close to our Denver apartment, the one we stopped going to when we bought our house. Her dog was sweet and adorable and he always wanted to play with Montana, but at the time Montana wasn't really into playing. She was very nice and friendly and welcoming. She asked about Montana's scars and when I told her I didn't know their origin, she said that she would just pretend that Montana had slipped when applying eyeliner.
   

What about you? Have you come across people like that in your life? Do you ever think about the ones from whom you've moved on?