A night of coincidence

You know all of that crap about a flap of a butterfly's wings in Peru causing a baby to have colic in Ethiopia? For proof, keep reading.

I met Chad in Destin ten years ago, and we've kept in touch sporadically since I moved away eight years ago. When we were in town visiting my parents this summer, he invited us over to meet his other friends who were moving to Sydney, Stephanie and Jake. Now those of you familiar with the Florida panhandle will realise just how strange it is for two couples at one dinner in Destin to be contemplating moving to Australia.

ANYWAY, that is how we found ourselves sharing a nice Italian dinner with Stephanie and Jake last night, comparing notes on the quirks of life in Australia. We continued to a typical Australian bar up the street, where we saw Ralph, from our sailing crew. In a city of 4 million people, I shudder to try to calculate the odds that we should see one of the ten people we know. I felt, gasp, like a local.

Well, we weren't such locals that we managed to be at the correct bus stop, so we watched in dismay as our bus whizzed by. As it was past midnight, we decided to cut our losses and catch a cab to the train station. Eric and I were chatting in the backseat when the cab driver asked if we knew the couple he had just driven home, who had told him they were from the top part of Florida. I guess it's not that crazy that the cab driver looped back by the bar after driving Stephanie and Jake home, but after the night as a whole and a couple of fizzy cocktails, it seemed like some kind of bizarre alignment of parllel universes.