I just spent a weekend in New York City, and caught up with an old friend, Karuna. This reminded me of a story that I shared at a meetup many months ago. The theme of the meetup was "Thankful." In honor of this trip, I'm going to present it here:
I am thankful for this John Coltrane boxset. It gave me one of my favorite stories.
I have a friend named Karuna. I met her years ago, while we were both students at Santa Fe College. She lives in New York City now. About two years ago, she worked at a gala event. She told me that she saw Spike Lee and a bunch of other famous people there. The event had a table of free jazz CDs and she snagged this John Coltrane box set for me. She asked me if I wanted her to mail it to me, and I was like "heck yeah I do! That sounds awesome!" I love Coltrane's music but his catalog is so large that i never really explore it and just wait for people to give me recommendations or just give me his music straight up.
And then after this conversation ended, I pretty much forgot that it happened.
About a week later, I get a text message from someone I hadn’t heard from in probably 6 years. Her name is Christina, and I worked with her while I was in high school at the now-defunct TCBY in Thornebrook Village, a small boutique shopping complex. She was living in New York City and working as a theater lighting designer the last I had heard. She sends me a message on Facebook that read: “This is so weird, but I was at the post office yesterday and happened to glance at the person in front of me and saw a package with your name on it! Are you getting something from NYC soon? Of course, it could be someone else with your name (I didn't catch the address)."
Now this gets mindblowing when I stop and think about it for a second. At the time, I only knew a couple of people in New York City. Karuna has never mailed me anything before or since. The one time that she did, she happened to be standing in front of someone else I knew. The only other person of the millions in New York City who knew me. And they happened to be in the same post office of the however many there are in NYC at the same time. On the same day. NEXT TO EACH OTHER. Let’s think about the chances of that happening. I WISH I had bought a lottery ticket that day because that was at least a one-in-a-million chance!
The world is a very small place.
So a few days later, I got my CD box set, and it hasn't left my car since.