A Small Town in Maine

It never fails to amaze me. Does this sound familiar to you?

"Oh are you from X?"

"Yeah, but I'm from a really small town in X"

"Which one?"

...and they are always from the same indiscriminate town, or at least so close that they feel like family. Not only is it fun to observe the kinship blossom, but last night it got me free drinks!

My coworker friends I bonded with at the holiday party and I met up at the diviest of dive bars down the road from Columbia and had a grand ol' time! ($2 Yuenglings?? Christmas came early this year! Unless, of course, that was my second Hanukkah present?) One of the girls is from Maine, and was describing her boarding school to me near the Canadian border and was creating the Maine border with her hand when the bartender, a very ragged but gentle gent, interrupts us:

"Are you from Maine?"

"Yeah, but this was a really small town off I-95"

And you can see where this conversation went. What are the chances! Two little Maineinites meeting by chance in New York City's Upper West Side. Like, HE was the bartender that night and heard her describing Maine to me and picked up on it and they bonded.

The REAL Christmas present came just after that when he declared "The next round's on me."

You know in Chicago we got Priya into a club without her ID because the bouncer was from the Inland Empire and supported my friends bashing my Riverside roots. Riverside takes you places! And speaking of Riverside, I've had that as my computer theme lately, and have this picture of the Mission Inn at Christmastime as the background:



It makes my heart happy! ...but not happy enough to move back there. Ha!