Thursday, September 20, 2007

It Is A Small World

Over the course of one’s life you encounter an amazing number of “Wow, what a small world” experiences. Here is my latest.

A few weeks ago I gave my Toyota SUV to my nephew who is a teacher at Coronado High School. He had a new starter put in it. I happened to be at his apartment when it was ready, so I gave him a ride over to the garage to pick it up.

El Paso, Texas is a fairly big metropolitan area. There are well over 1,000,000 people living here. And it is a big place too. My house is 50 kilometers from this automobile garage, and both are in the city of El Paso. I would guess there must be probably 500 or more auto mechanic garages in the metropolitan area.

Today a very dear friend of mine from Aachen, Germany, Erwin Wolharn was up at the museum at White Sands Missile Range and then later at the White Sands National Monument, New Mexico USA. He, his wife, and his children are all really delightful people. Some of the nicest people I knew when I was living in Europe. From his cell phone he called his son in Germany. He asked his son Richard to look at my blog to get my e-mail address and then to send me an e-mail asking me to call him on his cell phone.

I did, and we met at 4:00 this afternoon. We went over to Starbucks and had a cookie, a cup of coffee, and a wonderful chat.

He had asked that I meet him at the business of Julio, the brother of his delightful wife Carmen. And this business where we met up is the very same auto repair shop that put the starter in my nephew’s Toyota a few weeks ago.


Moral Of The Story: Don’t do anything that you don’t want the whole world to know about. Because you may be 1,000 kilometers away from home, but someone who knows you very likely will see you.
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RESPONSE: Paul, this reminds me of something Michael told me about yesterday. Someone-or-other was telling him that when she was in the hospital for something to do with cancer, she had a wonderful oncology nurse named Whatever-It-Was. Ms. Whatever-It-Was said, "Oh, you have an interesting name. When I was a fifth grader long ago, I had a teacher named Mr. Whatever-It-Was, and he was by best teacher ever. The patient told her that HER husband used to be a 5th grade teacher, and isn't it interesting. But the nurse said, I'm sure it's not the same Mr. Whatever-It-Was because that was in Maryland. The patient said, "Hmmm. It was when we were in Maryland that my husband WAS a fifth grade teacher." It turned out that the teacher of the nurse and the patient's husband were indeed the same person, and they all had a nice reunion.