It's a Small World (Take 2)

Okay, have I caught your interest? Are you a believer? Am I right? Is this just a really small freakin' world or is someone just messing with me? Ready to read more? Here's a story about a girl and a guy.

It must be True Love

I lived in Saudi Arabia for a while, between the ages of 10-14. My first year there I fell in love (as only a 10 year old can do!) with a handsome young boy of the same age. He had skipped a grade so was not in my class. (I'm such a geek to love those nerds! But he really was a cutie! Picture dark hair and a British accent! )

The good thing was that our parents had become friends. The Saudi government at that time required foreign families to be out of the country 2 times a year or something like that. In any event, our families took a vacation together. Picture two 10 year olds (complete with 1 younger sister and 1 younger brother and 2 sets of parents) gallivanting the streets of Paris and Rome and Scotland together. I was in heaven.

Unfortunately, the love was all one sided (my side, in case you've forgotten). And time passed, but I never forgot my first feelings of love.

Let's fast forward.

I'm sixteen now. I've just completed the state science fair (I know! I know! Geek!) for my project (I won’t bore you with the title). My entry was #27, my lucky number, so winning the honorable mention just proved how lucky #27 was for me. I was feeling quite special, and since I'd been up the night before at the science fair festivities, I got permission to stay home from school the next day. My goodness gracious! I would never do such a thing as to play hooky without permission!

So there I am at home on a day I should have been at school, and who should call me on the telephone? Out of the blue? Years later? Geniuses! I tell you, you are all geniuses! Yes, it was my first love. We ended up chatting for 2 hours long distance (at 16, what did we know about phone costs… and this was before “unlimited calls” and cell phones). Talk about being on cloud nine!

I’ve always thought it was strange that he should call on the one day I played hooky. Any other day, any other time, we would have missed one another. And yes, this did help (in my humble opinion) to set the ground work for our brief dating relationship later in my early 20s. Unfortunately, it is very difficult dating someone living continents away. So no, true love it wasn’t. But still a great example of fate vs. coincidence.