Once on the “Small World” ride at Disneyland, something went haywire and we were stuck in our boat for about an hour.
Meanwhile, the song, “It’s a small, small world….” kept repeating until it even got stuck in my head for days afterwards.
Day and night it’d replay, interrupting other thoughts, but at least it was a cute song and dancing dolls in costumes of different nations kept it from being too distracting.
The song brings to mind the exclamation, :it’s a small world!” or “What a small world!” when persons whether acquainted or not discover they have experiencd something exactly similarat different places or times.
Or they learn they have a mutual acquaintance.
I believe nearly everyone has had that “Aha!” moment as I’ve had.
When I arrived in Los Angeles years ago and toook a temporary job at an office before I was hired as a teacher, a co-worker happened to have worked with my older sister in Japan.
A former sudent of my husand’s is a secretary at a Chico school, and he learned of her when she got acquainted with our son when their sons were in Little League baseball together.
And after I wrote the article about shave ice for North StateVoices last year, a woman called to invite me to sample shave ice she made and planned to sell after she got the necessary health and business permits to vend.
Well, she happened to be the niece of a very good friend and classmate in Hawaii with whom I regularlye-mail.
The last coincidence was becoming reacquainted with a person who long ago had come to our church’s youth fellowship group in Hawaii as a summer student missionary. He, along with his team, helped lead workshops about missions in Africa and taught us folk dancing.
Fast forward more than fifty years and he’s now a retired minister and I newly retired to Chico. We didn’t remember being acquainted, until my old church in Hawaii celebrated its 75th anniversary and published a commemorative booklet.
In the booklet a member I still am acquainted with wrote of the long ago summer missionary team as they’d been the only such group to visit our little rural church. Among the listed names was the retired minister’s, and when I asked him about it, he, too, remembered that experience and we bought enjoyed reminsicing, truly, “a small world” moment!
