My wife Jaime grew up in Burien Washington, a small town just southwest of Seattle. It’s the kind of place that they modeled Dawson’s Creek after. Even now eight years after it went off the air, people still act like they are on that show. I dislike Burien with the snobbish attitude of someone who spent the first fourteen years of their life in farm country.
I can fully admit that my distain for Burien is completely irrational. The reason I hate going there is because every visit is never complete without Jaime exclaiming in a bar, or a store, or just walking down the street,
“I went to high school with that person.”
We would be sitting at a table in a restaurant and after a few minutes Jaime will disengage from our conversation and her gaze will drift over my shoulder. Though I already know the answer I ask anyway.
“Did you go to high school with that person?”
She will shift in her chair to get a better view and reply,
“Yeah. I did.”
There is one bar in particular that I have sworn off completely, not because it’s not a good or fun place to hang out, but because every night it is like one big high school reunion.
This might all have to do with a tinge of jealousy. I am not in close contact with hardly anyone from High school and even fewer from junior high or elementary. In the eight years that Jaime and I have been together, she has met maybe five people from my past. When passing through my home town I will often point someone out I went to high school with but hardly even know. Jaime on the other hand has had the same best friends since elementary school. They are unusually close and could make anyone wish that they had friendships like their.
College was a difficult time for many in Burien, as they were forced to build friendships outside of their hometown. Jaime was the first to date someone who they didn’t go to school with, and in return I was treated like an intruding alien.
When we moved to Los Angeles I expected these run-ins to end. With the exception of two college friends, we knew no one. I assumed that it was up to us to make new friends who we could run into. At least those were my expectations.
Within the first week while walking down the street in our neighborhood, we ran into Joy, a college acquaintance who graduated the year before us. We spotted Yolanda, another college acquaintance driving in a car behind us on Sunset boulevard. Jaime and I stared inquisitively at a girl in the bank trying to determine if she went to our college as well. It turns out she did. An actual college friend worked as a buyer for Intelligensia coffee.
It seems that Cornish College alumni and drop outs were crawling all over LA popping out of cracks in walls and loose plumbing knobs, like the sugar ants who eventually infested my apartment. Eventually the question changed to, “Did we go to college with that person?”
There would be similar incidents over the next three years, at restaurants, stores, and street corners. At one point Jaime and I spent days trying to figure out how we knew a woman we’d spotted jogging past the Silverlake dog park. Her face was so familiar that I could actually hear her voice and vaguely recall interactions we’d had. Ultimately it was decided that she worked in the admissions office at Cornish. We accepted this as truth until a week or so later when we sat down to breakfast at the Mustard Seed (our favorite breakfast spot in Los Feliz) where we realized that she was our waitress.
Gradually we made friends with locals as we became locals ourselves and the sea of faces became more familiar. Friends moved to the city and friends visited, we would discuss people we knew mutually who’d crossed our paths and the strange incidents surrounding the likely hood of those run ins occurring in LA.
On a Saturday in September, a month before we moved back to Seattle, Jamie attended a Law School forum at the Biltmore hotel. I went with her, mainly to hold stuff while she discussed the law programs with the various school representatives. If there was ever a place that I expected not to see anyone we knew, this would have been it.
While waiting in line to meet with a prelaw advisor Jaime glanced over at a nearby booth, I could feel her gaze rise over my shoulder and she went silent.
“I think I know that girl. I think we went to high school together.” I laughed realizing how long it had been since I’d heard her say that. “I think that’s Lisa.” She continued.
I assumed that Jaime was mistaken, that she was taking this game way too far. She continued to analyze the girl for a time before determining that;
“Yes, it is definitely Lisa.”
We got out of line and skeptically walked up to her. There was a pause for a moment of recognition before her face lit up and she smiled. I couldn’t believe it. 1,100 miles from Burien and Jaime still managed to find someone she went to school with.
I realize now that nowhere is safe. In any city, of any country, at any moment Jaime’s gaze could rise above my shoulder and become fixed on someone. I will refuse to say anything and soon she will adjust in her seat and exclaim,
“I went to high school with that person.”
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