Written by Claudia Turner

Leisure

It’s a stressful situation to run into anyone from your past, let alone someone you slept with or shared a trailer and bed with, or took to meet your dad.

There are the old HS crushes you made out with on a ski trip and the old coworkers from the office who watched you break a door and storm out into the horizon never to be heard from again. Then there are the exes: the one who broke your heart then stepped on it for six months at your neighbor’s house; the one who killed your cat then cheated on you with a melancholic hippie bellydancer with crooked teeth. You don’t want to run into one of these guys again but it’s guaranteed that it will happen to everyone who has ever dated anyone, regardless of how many states you have separated yourself from him or how many years have passed. The only thing you can do is be prepared when the inevitable occurs.

Let’s picture the scenario now: You’re at the health food store ordering a veggie burrito with black beans and tofu and he walks up behind you carrying a box of chocolate and possibly carrying it to the cart with the baby in it but also possibly to the cart a tall blonde with amazonian legs is pushing? He looks at you. Realization spreads across his aged face.

What do you do? First you just ask him what his name is.

If he says “Look, it’s all water under the bridge now…. I was still a child… I think we should be friends now” retort, “are you still working at the grocery store?”

Of course you must be nice. Tell him you hope he’s well and you are a lot happier without his limp dick.

And then be nicer. Go up to your hot male friend and point at your ex, “Gross.”

Give him a dollar and tell him to clean up.

Give him a voodoo doll with its head cut off.

If you do have a real conversation, don’t talk for more than two minutes. If he keeps talking, flip your hair and tell him you have a hot date with an Australian astrophysicist.

Is he with a hot chick? Does he look hot? Tell him he looks like an old man. Ask if that’s his grandma.

Smile a lot. Stand tall. You are a queen.