Locals
I forget whether I've written about this yet or not; I don't think so, but I've been meaning to for so long that I've lost track of whether I actually did it.
It was with some surprise a few weeks back that I realized that I now know nine people, distributed among five households, within about a ten-block radius of my apartment. Most people wouldn't consider this surprising, but I do, for a combination of several reasons:
- I've never exchanged more than a sentence or two with anyone who lives in my apartment complex, in the five years that I've lived here, so it's not like I easily befriend neighbors just 'cause they're neighbors.
- The people in question are from five completely unrelated contexts; none of the households know each other. (That sounds like a line from a logic-puzzle setup, doesn't it?)
- None of those contexts have anything to do with the local geography; I met at least one person in each of these households elsewhere, either before they lived here or before I knew they lived here.
- This is a recent development. It's only been in the last six months or so that I've known about three of the five households. (There've been two other such households in the past, but only two I can think of in the ten years that I've lived in this area (with a year off for traveling), and those two weren't both in place at the same time.)
- Mountain View (especially this part of Mountain View) is not some major center of geekdom or anything; it's not like there's a higher-than-normal chance that people I know would end up living here.
Not really such a big deal; just a coincidence. But kind of a surprising one, to Hermit Jed who's used to knowing almost nobody who lives nearby.