'Round 'n' 'Round

I run into people with such alarming regularity I've grown conceited. (I know, I know -- moi?) I'll run into my friend's husband as he bikes past my work, or see that the email my friend forwarded is from a guy who asked me (and, we discover, her) out. In the midst of Halloween Parade madness is a girl I met in an art gallery bathroom -- as one does. Swinging by a friend's house while out with a pal, I discover they've been good buds for years. I get on the El and see a guy I dated, then later the same day I attend an open bar and run into three people I know -- bam bam bam. There, in my friend's pictures, are all of my Italian friends. An acquaintance from a nightclub is pals with people who idolize a professor friend of mine. At my neighbors' party four of my friends will randomly show up, and at a birthday celebration it will emerge that one of the attendees took piano lessons from my aunt. Of course.

So when I went to a house party this weekend -- a friend of two of my friends -- I was initally disappointed that I knew not a single person there. But my streak held: Later in the night I talked to a bike messenger who used to deliver packages to my work, then bumped into to a guy I'd met on the street during an art walk. At the same art walk I had already run into a guy I'd met at a Burning Man party...

And so Chicago goes. The same socio-economic demographic hanging out in the same neighborhoods, going to the same bars, attending the same events. Stifling, yet oddly comforting. To think that someday I'll move to a city where I don't know anyone is simultaneously liberating and saddening. In the meantime, I'm positive that 90% of people I meet somehow know someone else I know. Or perhaps several someones.

'Round and 'round she goes, and where she stops, nobody knows.