He was a fellow-Bengali from Calcutta who had washed up on the barren shores of my parents' social life in the early seventies, when they lived in a rented apartment in Central Square and could number their acquaintances on one hand.
But we all know people who can count their acquaintances on one hand and people who turn every chance meeting into a life-long friendship.
In Japan, more than half of all respondents said that not one of their acquaintances on social networks was a close friend.
People use online tools as a way to be more social, she said, updating their acquaintances on what they are doing and making plans to meet in person.
On my first evening in Buffalo, the Katz family and some other contemporary observers of their acquaintance took me on a tour of what they considered a few appropriate chicken-wing sources so that I could make some preliminary research notes for later analysis.
Only Computer Weekly noticed that nine local authority workers have been sacked for accessing the personal records of celebrities, and their acquaintances held on the core database of the government's ID scheme.
They discovered in the course of their acquaintance that they had fought on opposite sides in a notoriously tough battle for an area called the Chinese Farm in the Sinai desert during the 1973 war.
It was early on in their acquaintance that he first mentioned the idea of the Log Lady, whom he wanted Coulson to play in a planned TV series called I'll Test My Log With Every Branch of Knowledge.
ESPN has enlisted ABC's Jimmy Kimmel in a new spot aimed at getting people to watch the College Football Playoff semifinals without forgetting their old acquaintances on New Year's Eve.
They include a report to George VI and files on their acquaintances, including Goronwy Rees, Victor Rothschild and Harold Nicolson, all long dead.
