Monday, September 21, 2009

daily snapshot: friends don't let friends . . .

Mason Summers Is A Sticker (Wayne at Georgia)
Have you ever walked down the street and said "I went to college with the kid on that sticker!" That seems to happen too often for me. I don't mean "I know kids who resemble the stereotypical emo kid on the sticker"; no, that could apply to anyone who spent time on Ellsworth Drive around 2005 (or talks to the bartenders at the Quarry House - ah, Ellsworth's finest, all grown up!) I mean, I went to architecture school with Mason Summers and, yes, he did have hair like that.

Small world, right? This sticker made my day before I began to wonder if my entire world is contracting around me, until one day everyone I have ever known from preschool to the present-day will live within a few blocks from me (like some nightmarish small town in Western Maryland) and I will run screaming to the nearest airport, taking me away to New York or California or somewhere that I do not recognize the people I see on street signs.

2 comments:

Cyndy said...

I went to college with Ellen(Tori)Amos. Nils Lofgren, Howard Stern, and Eunice Kennedy Shriver all used to come through my line at Giant. Connie Chung lived in my neighborhood growing up. It is indeed a small world.

Thomas Hardman said...

Actually, it's less of a small world, and more of a small town.

For the "super famous", you wind up inside "the Bubble", for instance the sitting President and suchlike wind up with a layer of security between them and everyone else, and that's both as it should be, and socially isolating in stultifying ways.

But think realistically: there are only so many grocery stores, so many health spas, so many jogging trails, so many soccer parks. Sooner or later, if you don't spend all of your time inside, you'll at least see someone who is widely recognized.