It's a small world

Yes, it is indeed a very small world. Certainly Norway is a very small country, metaphorically speaking.

The following is a true story.

My mother, the retired librarian, is a homework helper - ie she goes someplace, I think it's at the school, one afternoon every week and helps children who need extra academic assistance with their homework assignments and other schoolwork they need help with. This is something people do as volunteers, and the program is available to all school children from first through fourth grade. So, she works there Wednesday afternoons with some other retirees. This happened on Wednesday this week.

Or at least I think it was this week - come to think of it, it may have been last week, and then they talked again this week. But that's totally beside the point anyway. :-)

She overheard a couple of the other helpers talking about a book that one of them had been reading, but was having a hard time getting into ... she was saying that she would probably give up on it, she had started reading another book and couldn't really see herself returning to this first one. It just wasn't worth her time. My mother got involved in the conversation, because by some strange coincidence, my father is apparently now reading this very same book, and like this woman he is not enjoying it and has been talking about giving up on it and starting something else. Or at least he had been - this was four days ago, or maybe eleven days, so he's probably thrown in the towel by now. :-) Anyway.

The woman with the book said that she would probably give up on it, but it wouldn't be a total loss, because she could give it to her daughter so it could be used for BookCrossing. My mother was a little surprised to hear this, and she said Oh, is your daughter a BookCrosser too? So's mine! So they started talking about that, and how it was such a coincidence. The other woman said that she would have to tell S. - ie her daughter - about this. My mother said Your daughter's name is S. - that's an incredible coincidence - my daughter Leisha has a friend who's a BookCrosser, and her name is S.!* Of course the other woman says that at her daughter's birthday party just a few weeks ago, she talked to a young woman called Leisha who was a BookCrosser - and my mother says that this really is pretty incredible, but her daughter did go to her friend's birthday party a few weeks ago. Was it at restaurant such and such in Vika?

Of course it was - so my mother has been a homework helper for months and months now alongside this woman who now turns out to be my friend Travelina's mother! And I spent like half an hour talking to someone who volunteers with my mother, but neither one of us had any idea about the connection. I love it when stuff like this happens. :-D

It's a very small world. :-)

*Obviously I have a number of friends who are BookCrossers, but only one with this particular rather old-fashioned and unusual name. :-)