It's A Small World

As we all might say from time to time, it’s a small world.

My wife and daughter and I went to Betty’s Pies for dinner the other night, and I was surprised to see that our server was a woman that I worked with about 15 years ago. (Coincidentally, we had met another time a few years back when she purchased a couple of my Stillwater Bridge prints.) While talking to her, out of the corner of my eye I noticed a couple walk into the restaurant and be seated. I recognized them, too! I had worked with the man about 12 years ago, and again 4 years later. Then, while visiting with the couple, I realized that the man in the adjoining booth was also familiar, and stepped aside to say hello to the husband of a woman that I worked with nearly 30 years ago! When she returned from the restroom, we shared a few words, and then we all went back to our meals. As far as I know, none of them knew each other; only I was a common link. I don’t know if it was that the planets were aligned just right, karma, or merely coincidence, but maybe, if we simply paid attention to the world around us, these kinds of meetings would be commonplace. We live in a small world.

I was deeply interested in genealogy a few years ago, and came upon a name that sounded familiar. It was in a section of my wife’s family, starting two generations back, that I found a link to the name of a woman and her children, who I recognized as a family living in Scandia, a small community just 8 miles from here. We knew these people but didn’t know we were related, and the most interesting part of it was that my youngest son and the woman’s son were very good friends. When they learned they were also “cousins,” they just about flipped out!

Two young men, drinking wine on the rooftop of a hostel in Italy, were making small talk when they somehow got around to the realization that they both were part of my daughter and son-in-law’s wedding a year earlier. Danny, my son’s girlfriend’s brother, played violin; and Nels, my son-in-law’s brother, had been a groomsman and sang and played guitar. Even though they met at the wedding, it was a brief introduction among many, and they didn’t recognize each other on the rooftop until they began to talk and their worlds began to mesh. That amazing meeting on a rooftop in Italy clearly made the world seem very small!

After some discussion with a woman that I work with, I learned that she and my wife were in the same 4H club when they were kids, and if that wasn’t enough, her husband’s sister was a gal that I liked in high school.

My wife and I have laughed about the fact that we both spent time at the same McDonalds back in the late 1960’s, long before we met. The funny thing was that I was there as a high school kid driving my ’55 Chevy, while she was there with her family, having a meal, listening to all the loud cars cruising around the parking lot.

These are just a few examples out of many instances that we have experienced, demonstrating what a small world we live in. If any of you would like to share examples of your own small world stories, please feel free to leave them as a comment. It would be interesting to hear about them.