Of all the hotels in all the islands in all the world, they walked into ours.
My new husband (I'm still trying to get used to that word) and I spent last week honeymooning on beautiful Maui. In our own little private corner of paradise, we didn't turn on our cell phones much, check our e-mail at all or even think about our normal lives, which were thousands of miles away, along with everyone we know.
Well, almost everyone we know.
Our first morning there, we were in the hotel restaurant having breakfast, when I noticed a woman who looked familiar. In fact, she looked like the new wife of my friend Meghan's brother, Jeremy. The two had gotten married the day before my husband and I did, so I thought maybe they were just on my mind. Wouldn't it be funny if they'd come to Maui on their honeymoon too, I thought. I looked at the woman's companion, who I could only see from the back, and it looked like Jeremy.
I walked over to them, and yep, I was right. It was Jeremy and Megan (not to be confused with his sister Meghan -- his wife's name has no h). They'd not only come to Hawaii, but they'd come to Maui, and they'd come to our same hotel, not to mention coming to breakfast at the same time. We ran into them a few more times while we were there, mostly around the hotel, but also at a luau we attended. What would have been really strange is if they'd been at our table, too.
It was a little weird running into people we knew like that, but it was kind of cool. Sure, we were no longer "alone" in our tropical paradise, but really, that spell was broken as soon as we saw the umpteen other honeymooning couples. They were easy to spot -- they were all lovey dovey, and the men were all fiddling with their wedding rings, trying to get used to the feel of them.
Funnily enough, that wasn't the end of it. When we came home, we had to fly from Maui to Phoenix, then change planes, fly to Denver, have a short on-the-plane layover while they dropped off and picked up, then fly to Chicago. When we finally arrived at Midway, we were waiting at baggage claim, and I noticed a woman who looked a little like a work acquaintance of my husband's (I'm trying to use that word a lot so I can get used to it, but it's still weird). I pointed her out to him, and he confirmed that yet again, we'd run into someone we knew. It wasn't as weird as running into Jeremy and Megan in Hawaii, but what was weird was that she'd been on our flight from Denver.
I wonder if this sort of thing happens to everyone, because it happens to me all the time. I run into people I know everywhere I go, in places far away from anywhere I would normally see them, or I'll meet someone who knows some random person I knew long, long ago. I love these little meetings; it's so cool to see how we're all connected. And even if our corner of paradise turned out to be not so private, it's nice to have a reminder that no matter where you go, you're never alone.
3 comments:
This smacks of journeys with Dad. That old acorn just doesn't plop far from the tree.
It happens to my dad all the time. And it's usually someone he doesn't want to see, like a patient or something. We'd turn up for a really long flight and who should be sitting across the aisle from us but Mrs Wiswall (not actually Mrs Wiswall but probably someone equally annoying).
At Jerm's wedding, it happened to me twice, actually Robert once and me once. Robert had a random girl, one of Jerm's guests that we didn't know, come up to him and say "Justine says hi". Justine is a former student of Rob's at Lycoming. She had graduated in May of '06. It turns out that this random girl was Justine's roommate in college and that she dates a good friend of Megan's and Jerm's from PSU.
Then at dinner we were sitting across from Jerm's very good friend Justin, who roommed with him a year at PSU, and his wife Eileen. We mentioned Natchitoches, LA and it turns out that she was a on a rowing team in college (where I don't remember) and she used to come and row on Cane River Lake, which runs right through Natchitoches, during the summer with her team. Talk about random. What was great is that she didn't mind me talking her ear off most of the meal. You know me. I wonder if that's why I'm always the last one done at every meal.
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