First, I happened to catch one of my favorite movies: Serendipity with John Cusack and Kate Beckinsdale. I love this movie even though watching it now (and not in HD) makes me remember exactly how old I am. Over the years I've become a total believer in "fortunate accidents."
Second, D's longtime friend Tony came to visit for the weekend. As I listened to them swap stories about their glory days playing for the Thundercats in Knoxville, I realized another strange parallel in our lives. If I had happened to hang out with a few younger, more catty group of "kittens" in my sorority in college I might have met him or his friends years ago. And this isn't even the start of it! The following are some more of the "serendipitous" parts of our lives that ended in our eventual meeting:
1) D was swimming for a country club in Knoxville when I was swimming for a country club in Nashville. His Dad and my Mom were both meet officials. Though D eventually quit swimming to play football, I continued on. When I moved to East Tennessee I swam in meets at Oak Ridge High School, where his Dad was the swim coach.
2) My swim team used to work the Vanderbilt football games to raise money for our booster club. I was probably filling drinks and counting change in the concession stands when D was out on the field playing ball.
3)When I was a senior in college, I interviewed for 2 jobs for after I graduated. One was a position with Gallo where I had the chance to go to either Oklahoma, Texas, or South Florida. I chose South Florida and accepted their offer. The other job was working in Knoxville...for D's Dad's company. Just weird.
4) Little known fact: I actually met D at a bar in Deerfield Beach the week I moved to Florida...a week before we started working for the same company, in the same division. (Little-er known fact: we both caught each other's eyes because we were the only two people in our office that could see each other over the cubicle walls!)
5) And the most "fortunate" accident of all...Hurricane Frances. If our company hadn't had a late meeting the night Broward/Palm Beach counties were evacuated, D and I may not have become so close. You see, I had no gas and by the time we got out, there was none to be had. So I was forced to hitch a ride with whomever I could. 24 hours later we were still in the car evacuating. Needless to say, we then became quite good friends.
So as you can see, I feel like the stars aligned after several missed encounters. It's funny how life goes sometimes, isn't it?
No comments:
Post a Comment