It’s a Small World

I don’t know if I should apologize for getting the tune stuck in your head or keep singing the lyrics of the well-known Disney World ride, but either way, I bet you’re humming along to “It’s a Small World” because…it’s a small world after all.

As a kid that grew up as a “Disney brat,” I knew the song (and ride) backward and forward. I knew all the little languages within this magical-themed ride focusing on our similarities across the globe as opposed to our differences.

I grew up in a small town in (what used to be) rural Ohio. Idyllic, maybe, but it was also sometimes stagnant—you always saw the same groups of people. Same people at church, same people at school, same people in your neighborhood.

Don’t get me wrong—that isn’t a bad thing. I’ve recently found myself craving this homogeneous life for myself again as well as for my family. The longer we’re living this military life, carted off from duty station to duty station, traveling from one place to the next, I realize that my small world didn’t stop within the confines of the cornfields and cow pastures of Southern Ohio.

My “small world” is now global.

The first time I had this experience was when I was living in Savannah, Georgia. My husband and I hadn’t been married very long, and I took a job at the local Starbucks inside Barnes and Noble. I was ringing people up during the holiday season, so the lines were long and patience was short. I overhead a conversation between few patrons about Cincinnati, Ohio.

Of course, desperately homesick for a piece of home, I mentioned something to one of the customers when he got to the cash register to order. We got to talking, and as it would turn out, he was a retired OB/GYN that actually delivered my baby brother 30 years prior. The rest of the day, heck, for months after, I would recount that story starting with “what are the odds?”

I mean, how random and happenstance, right?!

This kind of situation has happened to me more times than I can count now that I live in Europe. I was standing with my husband in line for ball pictures and a couple behind us went to the same high school I did—he was a freshman when I was a senior.

I was boarding a train in western Norway and I saw a high school-aged kid in a sweatshirt bearing the name of my college alma mater (a small to mid-major college). I rushed over to him to introduce myself, and it turns out he was an incoming freshman to my beloved university.

I was sitting on a boat with my kids in Croatia and, as we got to talking with an older couple, I realized she graduated high school from the same school as my mother—a high school that doesn’t actually exist anymore.

These small chance encounters remind me that the world isn’t such a large, looming place after all.

That when you smile, the universal sign of friendship, and begin talking to people, you learn so much more about yourself and the world.

You meet people who touch you in ways that don’t necessarily warrant a Facebook friend request but leave you with a sweet memory that sticks with you for a lifetime.