It Really Is A Small World After All

There has been several discussions amongst my coworkers about the “small town” feel that exudes from Denver. Apparently, a lot people think that Denver is small town. At this point in the conversation, I like to tell people if they think that a metro area of almost a million people is small town, they need to visit my hometown with me to realize what small town really feels like. 217 people is small town, the Denver-Metro area is not.

Obviously I don’t see Denver as small town. Every face I see walking down the street is a stranger. It doesn’t help that I know very few people in Denver, but even if I did, the majority of the people I pass on the street everyday would be indistinguishable for the next person I passed. That’s one of the things I like about small town, among so many other things, you actually see people you know. People say hello when they pass one another on the street. You can go to the bar and strike up a conversation, that has actual merit to it, with a someone, not just small talk.

After today, however, I have to rethink my scope of Denver. It could be more “small town” than I previously thought.

After work today, I headed downtown, first to run some errands, and secondly to try and help curb my new obsession with The Office. I was headed down to the Virgin Megastore (the closest store that actually sells DVDs) to get seasons one and two of the TV show to try and make up for the fact I unintentionally missed the series premiere last night. Once I got to the 16th Street Mall, I was still six or seven blocks away from the store, so I hopped aboard the free shuttle service that runs the length of 16th Street. Two or so blocks from my stop I noticed a guy walking down the sidewalk and thought he looked a lot like a kid I went to high school with. Rationalizing my thoughts I realized this was Denver and that there was a very slim chance that one of the 31 people I graduated with was walking down the sidewalk of a major shopping center at the exact time I was riding the bus down said street. I mean, it sort of looked like him but, who knows how much people change in almost 5 ½ years. There was no way it was actually someone I knew, that would just be too crazy.

I got off the bus and stood waiting for the stoplight when I heard a voice behind me say “Kathryn?” When I turned around, well, what do you know? The guy I saw walking down the street was in fact one of my high school classmates. In the year and half I’ve been in Denver, this has never happened. I’ve seen a couple of my coworkers from a distance walking downtown (where they still live and work), but never has something this random and out of the blue happened. I shop at the same supermarket as one of my current coworkers as well as one of my former coworkers and haven’t seen them the eight months I’ve been shopping there. What better place to run into people, but the grocery store? Yet every face (with the exception of some of the checkers) is completely foreign to me.

My mom (in true “small town” fashion) ran into Dan’s mom at the grocery store, or somewhere like that, a couple of months ago and told her that Dan was in Denver going to school. So I knew he was in the city, but I never would have thought I would very randomly run into him. We spent a couple of minutes catching up (as much as you can do amongst the throngs of late afternoon Friday shoppers trying to maneuver around the only two stationary people in the crowd) and promised to have drinks sometime to actually catch up. It was one of those moments that was so unexpected, it almost seemed wrong for it to last five or ten minutes.

We went our separate ways, and as I looked for The Office (unsuccessfully I should add; Megastore my ass), I couldn’t believe what had just happened. After today’s events, I’m going to have to admit defeat to my coworkers. If I can run into one of my fellow 31 high school classmates in the middle of Denver, then maybe it really is the small town of all the major cities in the country.