A Small World

This one could have been titled Coincidence, but I think I already used that.

I had some errands to do today, and one of them took me to Lowes in the next town.  It was a specific errand.  I needed those hammer-in furniture glides for the dining room chairs in the condo.  I'd purchased and applied those stick-on felt ones only to find that they tended to slide off, leaving gobs of glue residue on the tile floors.  Yuck.  So there I was, in one particular aisle of the big-box store, looking at furniture glides.  I happened to look up and to my right, where another customer was looking at those plastic bubbles that one would put between the wood and the glass on a coffee table.  So on any given day, how many Lowes customers are looking for these things?

The other customer, it turns out, was my first cousin, Dotty.  Despite the fact that we live in the same town, I do not see Dotty often, although I have run into her in the A&P once in awhile.  But in the aisle that sells furniture glides and plastic bubble protectors in a big-box store in the next town?  How likely is that?

We had a good long chat, just the two of us in that empty aisle, and it was great to catch up.  Her grandson, Ryan, just signed with the New York Rangers, so it was exciting to get her first-hand perspective on that event.  Yes, it was a good long chat.  And then we hugged and said goodbye and laughed at where we might run into each other again.

I went to three other stores on my errand list and then headed home.  At a red light, I noticed that the car in front of me was sporting magnets of two schools that my cousin had mentioned in our conversation.  How coincidental, I thought.  And then I saw the license plate and recognized her husband's initials on it.  Oh, duh.  I am behind my cousin Dotty driving back to our little town.

What are the odds? 

So it's a small world.  These days, I drive around this county and think that I don't know anyone else who lives here.  They're all strangers to me.  And then something like today happens.

I don't know what it means, if it means anything at all.  But I do know that I love when it happens.