I really did.

I was wandering around the city hall parking garage in downtown Palo Alto, trying to remember where I’d parked my car (back East for a few days, my wife, correctly anticipating that after taking care of the children all day I’d be jumpy and tense, had arranged for a babysitter to take over for a few hours, making it possible for me to slip down to the Old Pro to watch Stanford basketball on television with a couple of buddies). I heard someone call my name, then turned to find my friends Joel and Susan Hyatt, who had just parked their car and were wandering around the garage themselves, trying to find the stairwell up to the street level. Although convinced liberals and major figures in the California Democratic Party, Joel and Susan are warm, funny, and personable, and, delighted to see them, I stopped to chat for a moment.

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At some point I became vaguely aware that a third person, evidently a friend of theirs, was with them—the lighting was dim, and (to be honest) I’d had a pretty stiff drink at the Old Pro, so all this happened slowly—and then, a moment later, recognized that their friend was the former vice president and presidential candidate. Susan introduced us, Gore and I shook hands, and, then, Joel having finally spotted the stairwell, the three of them moved off. I had only enough time to register that Gore was pleasant enough, that he seemed to have gotten some sun, that he looked heavier than he had during the campaign of 2000—and that, but for a few hundred votes in Florida, he would have been on his way to an important appointment, surrounded by Secret Service agents and a earnest members of the White House, not stumbling around in a badly-lit parking garage with a couple of friends who couldn’t find their way.

I got over it, of course. But for a minute or two there I actually felt a little sorry for the man.