It's a Small World (Redux)

For someone who is not a big believer in fate, my life has sure been crammed with coincidences.

Here's the latest coincident incident, illustrating two banal truisms: 1) it's a small world, and 2) in such a small world, even the most seemingly innocuous white lies can circumnavigate the globe and come back to bite you in the butt.

Scene One (five or six months ago): My boyfriend Travis and I join the Schlessingers, a charming couple of octogenarian academics, for dinner at their house. When he originally asked me to accompany him, Travis said he wasn't sure he wanted to explain to these lovely folks the unconventional nature of our relationship, so I agreed to keep my married status on the down-low. This basically means that I am posing as a single person – which is not actually all that easy, since in the course of the dinner conversation, I get asked an awful lot of questions about myself. I somehow manage to evade those few queries I can't answer truthfully (e.g., “So, are you two going to get married, or what?”). The dinner safely over, and the shoals of social awkwardness successfully navigated, Travis and I high-five each other and breathe a sigh of relief.

Scene Two (five or six hours ago, right before leaving for the airport to return home after a big family hoopla in honor of Parker's grandma's 95^th birthday): I'm standing in my mother-in-law's kitchen with Parker's Great Aunt Mattie. She's informing us that she hopes to visit us when she makes a trip to the southwest next month. “I'll be staying with some old friends of mine who live there. The Schlessingers – he's a physicist,” she adds – and, like an idiot, I blurt out, “The Schlessingers?!” Aunt Mattie: “You know them?” Me, backtracking: “Um, not all that well.” Aunt Mattie: “But you've met them?” Me: “Just briefly.” Aunt Mattie: “But that's remarkable! I've known them for sixty years, since before they were even married! Wonderful people, the Schlessingers! When I come, we simply must get together, all of us....now, how did you meet them?”

Faced with a question I couldn't gracefully avoid, not nohow, I coughed up a minimal explanation. “A friend of mine house-sits for them sometimes,” I said, wisely electing not to flesh out the story with further details, such as, “Yeah, actually I'm on intimate terms with their place: while they were away this summer, I cooked in their kitchen...slept in their bed...swam naked in their pool...it's too bad you won't enjoy your stay there half as much as I enjoyed mine!”

Oh dear.  I can only imagine how Scene Three will unfold.