I stopped today for a sandwich at a local shop today. I’ve been there countless times, and I’ve ordered food from this man often, but this is the first time he ever said anything to me other than the transaction at hand.

The gentleman behind the counter, whose name I should really know given how often I get lunch there, asks, “Didn’t they go out of business?”

It took me a moment to realize he was referring to my t-shirt – I always forget what shirt I’m wearing, and so I’m always momentarily confused when it sparks a conversation. Today, I was wearing a shirt with the logo of the 9:30 Club, a venerable DC concert venue that has concerts nearly every night.

“Didn’t they go out of business?” I was briefly baffled- Since I moved to the DMV five years ago, I’ve seen more than fifty shows there. It’s a fundamental anchor point for me in this city. I couldn’t in my wildest dreams have ever imagined that someone who lives around here wouldn’t know the 9:30 Club was there.

He continued, “I haven’t seen any commercials for it in a while.” I tried to explain about the giant billboard ads that show up in the Metro with upcoming shows, but maybe he just doesn’t take the Metro into the District very often.

I guess it still confuses me when someone has a reality so different than mine. I have a tendency to think that stuff that I know is just common knowledge to everyone, and I’m frequently completely poleaxed when I find this not to be true.

I suppose this applies to me as well, though. A dear friend of mine likes to say, when I’m cursing at an awful, terrible, very bad, no good driver in gnarly traffic that perhaps the reason they’re driving like that is because they have terrible diarrhea and they’re just trying to get home to a toilet really fast. Basically, it’s just like the old saying, “you never know what someone else is going through,” only with more poop.

My point, I guess, is that as often as I’m surprised when someone doesn’t know things that I know, I really shouldn’t be surprised at my own lack of knowing what other people know.

Or something. The original thread for this post has kind of gotten lost in the weeds, and I don’t remember quite where I was going with this one.

You know?

# For Nanopoblano 2025.