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I live in a relatively small town (say 36,500) and we have several grocery stores (about 5). Yet – I will only see someone I know, about 1 out every 10 to 20 visits. I don’t know about you – but I rarely run into anyone I know in town. Either I don’t know very many people or I don’t go to the store enough.
A few years ago, I started seeing one individual around town (in retail stores) so often I began wondering about it. I believe I mentally counted up – And I had seen an old work colleague of mine at the grocery store, the hardware store, the bookstore, the gas station, the coffee shop and K-Mart. All within a period of 1-2 months.
I finally said to him, “George, we gotta stop meeting like this”!
He admitted it was somewhat unusual to see me so often. He went on to add – his daughter and kids had come home to live for a while and he was actually using our town stores to just “get out of the house”. I was re-leaved to know there was at least one plausible explanation, I was starting to get a little paranoid. Interestingly enough – after that – I never ran into him again. Maybe he moved his “store time” to a nearby town or the kids moved out. I’ll never know.
Now here’s what happened yesterday.
Our daughter lives in a small town about 400 miles from where we now live. We’re briefly visiting on our way through during an extended vacation. We literally know 2 people in this town (Google says the population is 23,000) – her neighbors Joe & Sherrie. Like our town – this town has 4 or 5 grocery stores.
Yesterday – I decided to go out and get some bread about midway through the day. I was going to go to the regular food store but at the last minute I switched to one of the others. I wanted the real “home baked” bread. Well, you guessed it, as I walked into the grocery store, I immediately ran into one of the only 2 people I know in this town. Sherrie saw me and said – “I know you”! At which, we started a polite conversation on how our respective Thanksgiving Holiday’s went.
I bumped into her about 4 more times as we weaved our way around the isles – at one point she said (in a gesture of nervous surprise), “I’m really following you”.
I knew she wasn’t – but I also knew this was a really “Rare Event”. I only know her and her husband in this town and here I am in the same store at the very same moment with one of them. I’ve been to that store once in the week and a half we’ve been here. How did Sherrie and I pick the exact moment of day to be in that particular store?
Go figure.
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