I'm not Chris

I was out running today in Carrboro near Bolin Creek when a guy passed me on the street. He looked awfully like one Chris B., master impresario of running socks, so I said to him, not too loud "Hey Chris." I was pretty sure it was Chris, so after a few seconds, thinking he might not have heard me for some reason, I repeated, louder this time: "Chris."  At which point in time he turned back to me and said "I'm not Chris," in an annoyed tone of voice. At that point in time I quite politely said something like:  "I'm terribly sorry, you look an awful lot like him, yatta yatta yatta..." and the guy kept running, saying nothing more.

I'll confess, I was annoyed.  I had gone out of my way to be polite and acknowledged my error, but this guy really couldn't budget more than 3 syllables out of his busy day. And I wanted to say to him, "Hey buddy, this may be Carrboro, but we're still in the South here and people make a little bit more of an effort to work on manners with one another here.

In the end, I let it go, and I suppose that I really shouldn't get too worked up about controlling the behavior of complete strangers. Even when they are assholes.