“Don’t look in my direction again, mate.”

Pool was cancelled for this weekend, so I made an on-the-spot decision to play pool tonight to ensure that the weekly quota is met. Fortunately, other people came along (even on such short notice) so that I wouldn’t have to play against myself. We were playing pool at Rosemount Pot Black (North Perth) when some guy from another table walked up to me, got right in my face, jabbed a finger towards me and said:

Don’t look in my direction again, mate.

He then walked back to his table. I and the friend that I was talking to looked at each other with puzzled expressions on our faces. It was just… odd. I hadn’t even noticed the guy before. When I told my other mate, he got pretty upset and made a point of facing the guy, arms crossed and with a firm stare. When he got the next round of drinks he told the woman at the counter that there might be trouble.

After a while, the guy walked back over to the table while I was away and apologised to my two mates. I was on the phone at the time and went back to the table to see what was going on. I initially didn’t know he was apologising and was concerned that he was harrassing my friends. Then he said something like:

Sorry about earlier… I’ve got a lot of stress.

and motioned to shake my hand (which I accepted). I wonder what prompted his about face. I wouldn’t completely rule out a change of heart, but I wonder if it was due to the stare-down, his mates having more sense than him, or him seeing us on the phone a lot (maybe assuming we were calling some of our mates).