Chance Encounters
Everyone always says this is a small town and I always laugh at the silliness of the suggestion, I’m from Iowa after all. There’s two million people in the metro area here, there’s less than 10,000 in Waverly where my parents live. But it’s true. There’s just over 500,000 people within the city limits of Portland, and then once you wander a particular neighborhood or frequent a certain sort of place, you’re suddenly in a community not much bigger than Waverly.
Now that’s a stretch I admit, but it helps explain how I’ve randomly run into old friends not once, but twice in just a space of a week here. And this wasn’t in Powell’s Books or any bar or coffee shops I used to frequent. First I was meeting my friend Whitney for Happy Hour at Gold Dust Meridian on Hawthorne. Never been there before, but not five minutes after arriving three friends from my old office come walking up shocked to see me. And it happened again yesterday in an even more off-beat place. I was walking down a quiet residential street near where I’m staying by Alberta and I ran into my friend Celeste, haven’t heard from in a year. She was walking her dog and just glanced up at me with a puzzled look and said hi. We exchanged numbers and continued on our separate ways.
