The Serendipitous 20

A very good friend of mine often says that there are only 20 people in the world...you just meet them in different configurations. And the older I get, the more true I find that to be. For example, the principal who hired me when I first moved to Washington in 1996 has turned out to be a good friend of someone I didn't meet until 2013...long after she'd moved on to other things in 1999 and I'd lost touch with her. Maybe it's to be expected and shouldn't feel so coincidental, but it always does when those things happen.

And here is an example, of sorts, of another:

https://twitter.com/science_goddess/status/693562318085435392

I know it doesn't look like much. But when I first started blogging, or shortly thereafter, I ran across another blog by a Washington teacher who was also writing under a pseudonym. I don't remember when we finally put real faces with real names, but we had been friends over the Internet for a long time.

And now, we work together. Weird, huh? Oh, and before he came to our district from a neighbour district, someone in my office told me about how she'd been his mentor when he did his student teaching in her classroom all those years ago.

Because hey, there's only 20 people in the world, right?

I also love this tweet from the list from this date because of the #olywa reference. One of my counterparts in a neighbour district says that her family refers to things as "VO," meaning very Olympia. I don't know how to explain it other than this is a very different sort of town and in the best possible way. The serendipity of the place is second to none. I never know what I will see when I'm out and about. Sometimes it's a teenage boy in a tutu joyfully dancing with a sign to advertise his family's garage sale. Or a big, bearded, flannel-encased northwest dude complimenting the choice of purse for the man in a dress who just sat down at the bar. Or even a couple of weekends ago, I ran across a funeral procession as block party—people with beautiful bird and butterfly penants and a little band playing hymns while they all milled in the middle of the street to celebrate a life. So, if there's any place more perfect for all the disparate pieces of my life and past to come together in one neat package, it's here. I can hardly wait to see what happens next.