two degrees from stephylou

I think everyone has a friend in their life who you knew you were destined to cross paths with one way or another. Mine is Stephylou. And we have quite the history. We met in 1999 when I was working for the web hosting company. As a company, we were on the verge of tremendous growth and we jumped on board when the employee count was in the 50's.

I was dating Michael at the time, and she was dating his roommate Jim. Stephylou and I also went to the same college at the same time, but never knew each other there. I remember taking a business trip to New York with a few folks from the company to attend a trade show and Stephylou was right there -- my partner in crime as my hotel roommate. We were just silly girls in our 20's having the time of our life taking carriage rides in Manhattan in the middle of the night.

It's funny to see how our lives have evolved over the last eight years. I've moved to Atlanta and back to Seattle. She's moved to DC, Utah, and back to Seattle. And she even lived with me for a year while she tried to sell her townhouse in Utah a year or so ago.

But despite all of the history that Stephylou and I have together, and the common understanding we have with each other's upbringing, culture and the challenges we've faced because of it, for me, the most incredible thing is discovering everyday all of the other people we have in common.

Greg
Greg was a college friend of mine. He lived in an apartment in my complex with five other guys and somewhere along the way, I became part of that posse. We had a dinner co-op where each of us had a day of the week where we were responsible for making dinner for the rest of the gang. I was never really too good at it, but I enjoyed the hot, home cooked meals I got the six other days of the week. Greg and I were also in the same major in college, so we spent a lot of time together in classes, working on projects. Socially we also had lots of the same friends. I remember one summer taking a road trip to Zion's National Park to camp and hike through the Narrows. What a great summer! But alas, as all good things, it came to a crashing end our senior year of college over some very unimportant misunderstandings. All water under the bridge.

I knew that he had also moved out to Seattle after college, but I don't think I ever saw him again. Shortly after I met Stephanie in 1999, we somehow discovered that we both knew Greg. Quite a funny coincidence I thought. We compared notes. She confirmed (as I had always suspected) that he was indeed gay and now very open about it. Very eyeopening to realize your affections were directed to someone who could never return them. Time has passed and she doesn't hang out with him as much as she used to, but she gives me the occasional update on what's going on in his life. Sounds like he's still plugging along at the same company he joined straight out of college.

Emily
Oh, how do I know Emily? I'll try to simplify as much as possible. Emily dated my friend Scott in college. (Side note: Scott and Greg were also friends in college.) Anyhow, Emily and Scott broke up before we finished college and I never saw her again.

One day Stephylou was telling me about one of her trips to Italy. She'd lived there many years ago and goes back every so often to visit with friends. On this particular trip, she was visiting with an Italian family that she's friends with, and another American couple the Italians were also friends with, were in town at the same time. It turns out that the American couple was Emily and her husband Aaron, and that Aaron had also lived in Italy. At that time, they were living somewhere else in Europe and made a visit back to Italy to also see friends. In this Italian family's home, hundreds of thousands of miles away from Seattle, Emily and Stephylou figured our the Scott connection, which then led to their mutual connection with me.

Jeff
I remember when my sister called to tell me she was getting married to some guy from Cody, Wyoming. Now, I know that Wyoming is a big, sprawling state, but I had a hunch Jeff may have known Stephylou since she was also born and raised in Cody. And what do you know? They did. Albeit Stephylou was a bit older than Jeff, so it's not like they went through grade school together. But Cody is really a small town, with lots of related families, and so it was quite a kick at Andrea and Jeff's wedding to chat it up with Jeff's uncle who knows Stephylou quite well. My only sadness was that Stephylou wasn't able to make it to the reception to see her Cody townsfolk because she was out of town on a business trip. Sometimes it's just weird to think how random it is that my friend grew up with my brother-in-law in the middle of Wyoming.

Jason
I don't know Jason very well, but I met him when my family moved to Louisiana in 1992. Our families had a common experience -- living in Southeast Asia. We lived in Malaysia, they lived in Indonesia, but yet even through the international school alliances over there, our paths didn't cross until we got to Louisiana. The world becomes a small place when your parents work in the oil industry.

Anyhow, Jason ended up going to the same college that I did, but we were friends, so we didn't hang out the whole time I was in college. Years went by and I left without looking back. One night (when Stephylou was living at my place) we were telling college stories and her story involved a guy named Jason. As soon as she said his last name (a very unique name at that), my ears shot up. Are you kidding? You know him? We started comparing notes, and it was indeed the same Jason who I had met while living in Louisiana.

Kenzel
For as long as I've known Stephylou, I've figured that we know pretty much everything about each other....until today. She's applying for a position at a company here, and though some mutual friends, I've been helping her with getting connections at the company. I think in my last life I was a recruiter because I love to get people connected (at least on the job front).

Anyhow, I was telling her that I knew Kenzel and that he had been a VP at that company. She stopped me in the middle of my story and told me that she knew Kenzel. He had hired her to that company many, many years ago. I couldn't believe it! Yet another connection! Well, how did I know Kenzel? He and his wife adopted my biological niece three and a half years ago. They were next door neighbors to a colleague of mine and knew that my sister was looking for adoptive parents for her baby, and viola, Kenzel and his wife were trying to adopt.

Other than marrying my brother (which she can't do since he's already married), I can't think of many more ways that Stephylou and I could be connected by various people who have crossed our paths in life.

But it does make me realize, nothing is by chance. We were all destined to meet. My friends were intended to be my dear, sweet friends. A blind date with my wonderful Rick was not happenstance -- Stephylou was the one who set us up. In some ways, it's just nice to know that in a world with billions of people that you don't get lost and everyone has a place and leaves footprints in our lives -- even in the simplest of ways.