Monday night I wrote to one of those anonymous craigslist addresses about a dining room table in an ad. And it turned out it was being sold by someone I went to high school with. Even weirder: I recognized her married name, although I did not know her well at all and haven't seen her since graduation. After work yesterday I recognized someone else from high school in the cafe at Borders. Over the last week, I've probably seen about 20 people I know on the street and at the Folklife Festival - I didn't plan to spend Sunday booing St. George with Ogram, I just ran into her there.
So, basically, I can't pick my nose in public anymore. Does this happen to other people? Is this what it's like to live in a small town?
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7 comments:
woah. i've had some weird run-ins on the street, but the craigslist thing is even stranger.
did you end up getting the dining room stuff?
Haven't decided yet about the table. I had a craigslist encounter once before - I e-mailed with this woman a few times about her TV, then met her at a party before I got to her apartment to look at it. (It turned out the TV didn't have the right connectors for my DVD player.)
Once I sold a book on half.com to...someone in my department (no shipping costs there!). And another time I sold one to someone I used to work with at OFGAM.
Also, I've gotten to the point where I have a few friends I've made pretty much through random encounters - like we meet through a friend, but then run into each other so many times that we become friends ourselves. But then, that's not all that surprising given that there are only so many places grad students go in this town (we all live in the same neighborhoods and take the same buses back and forth to the same libraries and coffeeshops). I've also gotten used to fielding the "Did you go to [OAM]?!?!" question on the bus, on the sidewalk, wherever. I guess that last part won't happen after I move (although one person from OAM has already contacted me b/c she figured out I was moving there), but the seeing people I know will pick up since I'm moving to a much smaller place.
I think this happens regardless of where you live, so long as you live where you went to high school. I mean, if I moved back to back to my hometown (god forbid) I'd run across high school people all the time.
And then I'd run away or - if no escape was possible - play dead until they left the area.
This is why I've pretty much moved only to places where people from my high school would never move (e.g. Cleveland, Chicago).
But most of the people I run into aren't high school people - that's pretty unusual, actually. I see choir people, Christmas people, work people, old work people...church people, random people...everyone. They all just stand around waiting for me to cross their paths, I'm sure of it.
I saw an interpreter friend working at the Folklife Festival when I went. Wacky.
I _never_ see high school people when I'm in the TC. I think it helps that my mom now lives in a different suburb, even though you'd think that paths would cross at the mall or something.
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