Small World

So, I've moved around some in my life. I was born in NC, moved to Louisville, the Cincinnati, then Columbus. Returned to NC for high school, went to Raleigh for college. Somehow, I got married and wound up in Dallas and now Georgia. The point of that list was to illustrate how small the world is, even without Facebook!

So, from 4th grade through 8th grade, we lived in a smallish suburb of Columbus. Once we moved, I kept in touch with a few people, but mostly lost touch. Fast forward to my first year of teaching. I started my new job in a small town outside of Raleigh, teaching 4th grade. I found out there would be another first year teacher on my team who would be teaching next door to me. As you can probably guess, it was a friend from when I was in 4th grade myself - in Ohio! What are the odds, one thinks. So we re-friended and went to one another's weddings, etc. Wild! Who knew?

Fast forward to two years ago in Dallas. This one actually was MySpace related, as I found my best friend from (what else?) 4th grade living just 15 minutes from me in Dallas. We met up for lunch, double dated a little and started to hang out as adults. This is a strange, strange thing to meet up with your childhood best friend for margaritas in Texas when you last saw one another rollerskating in Ohio in 1987.

Then, then? This weekend, we took Pigpen and Piglet up to the neighborhood Santa social for pictures and breakfast (see gratuitous Santa pic below) We're standing in line, talking to people, meeting new neighbors and it comes up that this girl was from the same suburb in Ohio that I lived in! What's more, she's a year older than I am and went to the same middle school when I did! We're in one another's yearbooks and know all the same people. When I looked at her picture, I knew her 7th grade self. Is this not strange that I'm running into people I knew in this obscure town in Ohio all over the country?

It's a little shady. Surely that must be all the ones to come out of the woodwork. I'm sure lots of people are having Facebook events like this all the time, but only one of mine was internet related. Okay, done rambling. Here is gratuitous Santa shot. Try to ignore the fact that both children look alarmed because the Santa was quite photogenic.