After handing in my wedding ring to get it resized, I spontaneously swung by a new Pokémon card shop in town. I walked in, looked at the man behind the counter, and thought: “That face looks familiar. Could it be…?” I browsed for a while, picked out a box to buy, then started talking to the guy while checking out. He recommended some boosters, punched in the numbers, and when he handed me the receipt and my debit card, he said: “I just read your name on your card. Do I know you from somewhere?”
I asked: “Is your name Ahmed?” His eyes widened, and he said yes. It turned out we had briefly gone to high school together 20 years ago. The last time I had seen him was at a New Year’s Eve party at my house in 2010—where he memorably, though entirely accidentally, destroyed part of our stone kitchen counter. “No way! Fancy meeting you here! Small world!”
I wouldn’t have expected to bump into Ahmed anywhere, let alone in Munich. Last I remembered, he lived in the north of Germany. Alas, people move. His father lived nearby, and he’d run a small Pokémon business himself since 2021. He applied when this new store opened and got the gig—so there he was. I, meanwhile, had gotten back into collecting in late 2023. Stores in Munich are far and few between. If a new one opens, I always go to check it out eventually—so there I was.
Nobody knows the timing of good things. They can happen right away or 15 years later. Force nothing, embrace everything. Walk through life with both open eyes and arms. You never know who you’ll meet behind the next door.
