Unexpected

"Cast out into the universe and see what comes back."

Randomly, possibly inspired by a conversation I had with the woman at the front desk of the vet's this morning about her son, Jason (a conversation itself inspired by my Nationals hat!), I asked Jessica what ever happened to Jason Freitag, a boy I went to school with back in Indiana. She looked up his information in the latest reunion book, and said, other than he graduated 5th in the class, there wasn't any information about him.

Fifth in the class? Well, that lead to the question of who was in the top ten of her graduating class, given that I didn't graduate with her. She listed a number of names, though not all ten, then commented on the people not in the list.

Well, duh, ME.

A couple other "expected" people in the list who weren't there, where expectations were set in the ninth grade, before the two junior high schools merged into one great, gigantic, green and white high school, included Marth Meyers (looking fabulous at the reunion, though) and Jill Bodensteiner.

Jill, eh?

Shortish. Played basketball. Awesome red hair, right?

Yeah.

I couldn't find a single recent picture of her (curse you, Google! and the spiders you're built on!). My memory of her, however, is that she looked very, very similar to an ex-coworker of mine. Said ex-coworker also has no pictures of himself online, which is a shame, actually, because I burned all of mine of him in a voodoo ceremony designed to increase wealth and breast sizes (yeah, don't ask, bitterness may set in again).

So, even if I could find one of Jill, I wouldn't be able to find one of him to compare.

I shrugged at the injustice of my inability to gain gratification of instant curiousity appeasement, and went back to work, thinking not much of it.

Fast forward six hours, and I'm standing around with Kris and Warren at their first softball game of this particular league's season, wondering just what level of frustration Kris has gotten himself in for, laughing at some particularly entertaining joke someone just told, when I look over to my left and right there, Right There, RIGHT THERE is my ex-coworker.

He didn't see me, which is fine, because I probably would have punched him in the face if he actually approached me to say hello. I watched him a little bit, realizing that my memories of his looks were a LOT different than reality, and his demeanor was probably similar to Jill's, hence my belief they looked alike.

I couldn't help but marvel, however, just how strange this world is sometimes with its coincidences. I think I'll go add Illusions to my reading list for tomorrow's train ride.