Thursday, January 31, 2008

Small Lake City

So yesterday, I was playing basketball with some guys from a friend's Single's Ward like I usually do Wednesday nights...and a guy came over to me. It was a person I hadn't seen since I was 16: C.J. C.J. and I were friends during grade school; I invited him to my birthday parties and had gone over to his house. We weren't best friends by any means, but liked each other and would enjoy rides on the chairlift together.

The odd thing was, he was there to support his wife you lead a yoga session that ends about when basketball begins at this single's ward. So there you have two married guys who hadn't seen each other in a dozen years meeting each other by chance at a single's ward. What are the odds?

This kind of thing seems to be happening to me more and more these days. Maybe it is because I go on Facebook tears, but I seem to be reconnecting with people from my past all the time in the last few weeks. More likely, it is because my tenth high school reunion is this year, and my wife is organizing it. {Yes, I married my high school sweetheart)

My mom calls this town Small Lake City because of the numerous times you bump into people you know, or how you meet people who know other people you know. And it is true. I went to get flu shots this fall at Smith's at a random time of day, and I spotted former Chief Justice Michael Zimmerman reading motorcycle magazines and buying super glue. I said hello (both his and my family used to go camping together) and he explained that he bought a Harley from his brother-in-law and loves it. I didn't ask what the super glue was for.

So what is the point of all this rambling? Well, either you can get annoyed and hate the fact that you can never be anonymous in this city, like I did in high school, or you can enjoy it, like I do now. You can find drawbacks in any city or town you live in, or make the most of the place, or move to somewhere you like better. Throughout the years, I have lived in lots of different places, and all have their pluses and minuses, but Salt Lake always feels like home to me.

1 comment:

Clint Gardner said...

Well, the old joke in SLC (at least in my version of it) is that if you go to one bar, you're going to them all because you'll see the same people at any given place.