I was turning onto Lenox, staring at my phone, choosing which group of whiny midwesterners would fill my commute, and Abby Conklin popped a balloon. “Sean!” she yelled, looking exactly shocked. “What the hell!” Her question went unanswered, she went to work and so did I, but the word “Facebook” was promised as we parted ways.
I was for some reason not surprised at all. Abby was an RCAH student, a year ahead of me, who left MSU abruptly before the start of last fall, to pursue some sort of something I, to tell the complete truth, was never entirely clear on. I knew she had ended up in New York, but to continue the streak of honesty, hadn’t given the idea of meeting her here even a single thought. But for some reason when I took my headphones out at the sound of “Sean,” when I turned around and saw someone I had last seen more than a year ago--in Snyder Phillips Hall no less--I was unfazed. It seemed perfectly ordinary to me that Abby Conklin was standing there.
Maybe this is why: When an incredible coincidence comes to fruition, I am less impressed by the astronomical odds than the overwhelming explanatory power of the law of large numbers. Give anything unlikely thing enough chances and it becomes likely. The fact that our meandering commuting patterns ended up crossing means that this first encounter was preceded by a month of near misses.
Maybe that’s not it at all: After a month in which I had known not a soul, seen not a friendly face, heard not a “Sean!”, I was so ready to believe, uninterested in pinching myself or asking how.
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