Me too! My small world stories always start with "I've probably told you this before...." because, unfortunately perhaps, I never tire of telling the few that I really love. Maybe some day Story Club will go off on a small-world tangent, and I'll have yet another opportunity. (Which reminds me of a favourite quote from Eugene Ionesco'…
Me too! My small world stories always start with "I've probably told you this before...." because, unfortunately perhaps, I never tire of telling the few that I really love. Maybe some day Story Club will go off on a small-world tangent, and I'll have yet another opportunity. (Which reminds me of a favourite quote from Eugene Ionesco's *The Bald Soprano*: "He agrees! He's going to bore us again."
Once, I made it a point––a wish really, to try to see if I could "focus" on running into someone I knew on an epic New York walk from NYU to Midtown, where I was meeting friends at a deli. I never took my eyes off the faces that passed me the entire way, I really looked at people, and because it was a sunny autumn day, I got away with staring because: Sunglasses. At the end of that walk, not having run into anyone I knew (I was bummed because it had happened before... and I was so sure of myself!) I looked into the window of the deli where I was meeting my friends, and there he was, my writer friend Paul, standing in front of the window looking out, sucking down a smoothie. It is such a simple memory, but the sheer joy of seeing him there, how happy we were to be randomly running into each other in the very place I was headed to meet other friends, plus the fact that I didn't live there and I didn't know he'd moved to New York. Satisfying.
Great story, S. Shepard! I remember when I first moved to NYC in my 20s. I was so happy to finally be getting out of Seattle, Washington, where it felt like I knew every other person on the street. (Seattle used to be small and sequestered in the corner of the country. It felt like the middle of nowhere, and ten years behind everywhere else. Also, rainy.) Anyway, there I was, DAY ONE in NYC, walking down 108th toward Broadway and telling a new friend how great it was to be in a new place where I knew no one. Well, of course, RIGHT THEN we turned onto Broadway and someone shouted out my name. I mean, it was like he'd been hired to pull that one on me. At that moment, the world seemed way too small. Something similar happened to me years later when I had just moved to DC. We were at a Nats game--exactly 24 hours after moving to the area--and I was feeling whiny and sad. I had just turned to my husband to say how hard it felt to move to a new place AGAIN where I knew no one (my poor husband--he puts up with so much), and RIGHT THEN I got a text that said, "look over your right shoulder." Yep, an old friend in the row behind us. In that moment, i was happy that the world felt so small. Life. It's amazing to be here.
I'm so chatty today. Still in a good mood after last night, I guess. Plus, I just scored the ugliest mug at my local Goodwill after scarfing down a breakfast burrito made with tater tots. Win-win!
I love these stories. And: Bring on the chatty. I love it! I realize that in these days if we keep our heads down and in our phones, instead of looking around us, we could be sitting close to an old friend and never notice them at all! Yay for looking around.
Okay. I'll bite. First a tiny, if inconclusive one, since N.Y.C. is a subject. Years ago (many!) I was told by several friends or acquaintances over a period of months that I had a doppelganger in N..Y.C. Unfortunately I never did meet or see him.
I have a more conclusive small world story. On our first morning in a B&B in Dublin, Ireland, in the breakfast room, Martha and I overheard the landlady telling other guests the story of her trip to the U.S.A. "I flew to Boston to visit with relatives there, then flew clear across the United States to a place called Larchmont to visit more kin...." (It is a suburb of N.Y.C. - but that's a direct quote). When she visited our table I said "That's where I grew up." "Well," she said, and asked if I knew the family she visited on Larchmont Avenue. I didn't.
Eight months later my mother visited Martha and me in Toronto, where we were living. Driving in from the airport I told the story of the landlady in Dublin, and asked Martha if she remembered the name of that family on Larchmont Avenue. "I think it's in my journal."
She produced it and found the entry. "Cashman."
"Oh," said my mother, "that would be Hugh Cashman on Larchmont Avenue. His son boarded at our house while they were doing renovations on theirs."
OMG. If Martha hadn't written it down in her journal, she might not have remembered the name!
Your doppleganger story is funny, too. For years I was told I had one––some person who was my double, she even dressed like me, or so I was told. "I saw her again today, I thought it was you," several friends said. Some were embarrassed that they'd shouted out my name. I never met my double, either.
I met my double. We look nothing alike! But other people mix us up all of the time. (I'm thrilled. She's younger than me....)
Tim, I lived in Larchmont Woods at one terrible point in my life. Springdale Road off of Rockingstone, if that rings any bells. Just up the hill from the Larchmont train station. Larchmont was a super cute town back then. (Did not know the Cashmans....[insert winking face here]. Great story!
I lived yards from Manor Park, and was ten years old when Hurricane Carol hit and blew down the Manor Beach pavilion. We have our own Rockingstone close by where I now live, in Nova Scotia. Go to Google images with this search phrase: the rockingstone in halifax nova scotia
The first image s/b from my friend Stephen Archibald's wonderful blog "Noticed in Nova Scotia" q.v. He is a great museologist and curator of the built environment.
BTW I wonder if there are any woods left in Larchmont Woods.
What a great blog! And wonderful photos of the Rocking Stone! Thanks for sending me to your friend's site. (And no, there are no woods left in good old Larchmont Woods. I left there to move to a semi-rural island in Puget Sound, where I could breathe again.)
Me too! My small world stories always start with "I've probably told you this before...." because, unfortunately perhaps, I never tire of telling the few that I really love. Maybe some day Story Club will go off on a small-world tangent, and I'll have yet another opportunity. (Which reminds me of a favourite quote from Eugene Ionesco's *The Bald Soprano*: "He agrees! He's going to bore us again."
Tim, I love your comments. Tell me a story!
Once, I made it a point––a wish really, to try to see if I could "focus" on running into someone I knew on an epic New York walk from NYU to Midtown, where I was meeting friends at a deli. I never took my eyes off the faces that passed me the entire way, I really looked at people, and because it was a sunny autumn day, I got away with staring because: Sunglasses. At the end of that walk, not having run into anyone I knew (I was bummed because it had happened before... and I was so sure of myself!) I looked into the window of the deli where I was meeting my friends, and there he was, my writer friend Paul, standing in front of the window looking out, sucking down a smoothie. It is such a simple memory, but the sheer joy of seeing him there, how happy we were to be randomly running into each other in the very place I was headed to meet other friends, plus the fact that I didn't live there and I didn't know he'd moved to New York. Satisfying.
Great story, S. Shepard! I remember when I first moved to NYC in my 20s. I was so happy to finally be getting out of Seattle, Washington, where it felt like I knew every other person on the street. (Seattle used to be small and sequestered in the corner of the country. It felt like the middle of nowhere, and ten years behind everywhere else. Also, rainy.) Anyway, there I was, DAY ONE in NYC, walking down 108th toward Broadway and telling a new friend how great it was to be in a new place where I knew no one. Well, of course, RIGHT THEN we turned onto Broadway and someone shouted out my name. I mean, it was like he'd been hired to pull that one on me. At that moment, the world seemed way too small. Something similar happened to me years later when I had just moved to DC. We were at a Nats game--exactly 24 hours after moving to the area--and I was feeling whiny and sad. I had just turned to my husband to say how hard it felt to move to a new place AGAIN where I knew no one (my poor husband--he puts up with so much), and RIGHT THEN I got a text that said, "look over your right shoulder." Yep, an old friend in the row behind us. In that moment, i was happy that the world felt so small. Life. It's amazing to be here.
I'm so chatty today. Still in a good mood after last night, I guess. Plus, I just scored the ugliest mug at my local Goodwill after scarfing down a breakfast burrito made with tater tots. Win-win!
I love these stories. And: Bring on the chatty. I love it! I realize that in these days if we keep our heads down and in our phones, instead of looking around us, we could be sitting close to an old friend and never notice them at all! Yay for looking around.
Okay. I'll bite. First a tiny, if inconclusive one, since N.Y.C. is a subject. Years ago (many!) I was told by several friends or acquaintances over a period of months that I had a doppelganger in N..Y.C. Unfortunately I never did meet or see him.
I have a more conclusive small world story. On our first morning in a B&B in Dublin, Ireland, in the breakfast room, Martha and I overheard the landlady telling other guests the story of her trip to the U.S.A. "I flew to Boston to visit with relatives there, then flew clear across the United States to a place called Larchmont to visit more kin...." (It is a suburb of N.Y.C. - but that's a direct quote). When she visited our table I said "That's where I grew up." "Well," she said, and asked if I knew the family she visited on Larchmont Avenue. I didn't.
Eight months later my mother visited Martha and me in Toronto, where we were living. Driving in from the airport I told the story of the landlady in Dublin, and asked Martha if she remembered the name of that family on Larchmont Avenue. "I think it's in my journal."
She produced it and found the entry. "Cashman."
"Oh," said my mother, "that would be Hugh Cashman on Larchmont Avenue. His son boarded at our house while they were doing renovations on theirs."
OMG. If Martha hadn't written it down in her journal, she might not have remembered the name!
Your doppleganger story is funny, too. For years I was told I had one––some person who was my double, she even dressed like me, or so I was told. "I saw her again today, I thought it was you," several friends said. Some were embarrassed that they'd shouted out my name. I never met my double, either.
I met my double. We look nothing alike! But other people mix us up all of the time. (I'm thrilled. She's younger than me....)
Tim, I lived in Larchmont Woods at one terrible point in my life. Springdale Road off of Rockingstone, if that rings any bells. Just up the hill from the Larchmont train station. Larchmont was a super cute town back then. (Did not know the Cashmans....[insert winking face here]. Great story!
I lived yards from Manor Park, and was ten years old when Hurricane Carol hit and blew down the Manor Beach pavilion. We have our own Rockingstone close by where I now live, in Nova Scotia. Go to Google images with this search phrase: the rockingstone in halifax nova scotia
The first image s/b from my friend Stephen Archibald's wonderful blog "Noticed in Nova Scotia" q.v. He is a great museologist and curator of the built environment.
BTW I wonder if there are any woods left in Larchmont Woods.
What a great blog! And wonderful photos of the Rocking Stone! Thanks for sending me to your friend's site. (And no, there are no woods left in good old Larchmont Woods. I left there to move to a semi-rural island in Puget Sound, where I could breathe again.)