On Random Acquaintances and Small Worlds
Jul. 28th, 2005 11:08 amFor the past five years, I have worked in Kendall Square in Cambridge, MA. For the past year or so, I have (about once a week or so) run into a very nice older gentleman named Joe who seems to have a number of acquaintances who work between the Kendall Square T stop and wherever it is that Joe works (he works somewhere on the other side of the canal from my office building; we part ways at the front of my office building and he continues on toward the Athenaeum and the Galleria). Joe has, over the time we've been walking together from the T (or thereabouts) to my office, introduced me to various and sundry folks. One of them, a lovely woman named Maryanne, commutes into North Station and then walks across the Longfellow Bridge and down to her office somewhere on the other side of the Volpe Transportation complex.
Maryanne and I run into each other more often than Joe and I run into each other; she and I seem to be on almost the exact same schedule, as I have frequently encountered her not only on my walk to work in the morning but also on my way to the T after work. We tend to stop wherever we've run into each other, talk for between 30 seconds and 3 minutes, and then head in our respective directions.
This morning, Maryanne commented that she hadn't seen me in about a week, and I told her we had been in New York. She asked about our trip, and I explained that it was mostly a week of touring and seeing friends, but that![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mabfan had a couple of buisiness meetings with editors and the like. She asked what mabfan wrote, and I said SF. Maryanne said, "Oh, then he's the fourth person I know of who's a writer and the second who writes science fiction." On a whim, I asked who the other SF writer was that she knew. And it turns out to be Walter Hunt, whom mabfan and I just saw at Readercon 3 weeks ago. It turns out that Maryanne and Walter used to work together, until they were both laid off on the same day.
Small, small world. It always amazes me how the lives of people I know intersect.
Maryanne and I run into each other more often than Joe and I run into each other; she and I seem to be on almost the exact same schedule, as I have frequently encountered her not only on my walk to work in the morning but also on my way to the T after work. We tend to stop wherever we've run into each other, talk for between 30 seconds and 3 minutes, and then head in our respective directions.
This morning, Maryanne commented that she hadn't seen me in about a week, and I told her we had been in New York. She asked about our trip, and I explained that it was mostly a week of touring and seeing friends, but that
mabfan had a couple of buisiness meetings with editors and the like. She asked what mabfan wrote, and I said SF. Maryanne said, "Oh, then he's the fourth person I know of who's a writer and the second who writes science fiction." On a whim, I asked who the other SF writer was that she knew. And it turns out to be Walter Hunt, whom mabfan and I just saw at Readercon 3 weeks ago. It turns out that Maryanne and Walter used to work together, until they were both laid off on the same day.Small, small world. It always amazes me how the lives of people I know intersect.
