Synchronicity or something close to it

I have survived the first week of school and the school year looks promising. Sure there are a couple of kids with some attitude but I think I'm starting to win them over. Once that happens, we can start to have fun -- projects, field trips.

Friday night I headed out with five teachers from my school and a teacher from another school who is friends with one of my co-workers. One of the fourth grade teachers went to the same undergrad that I did as it turns out -- at the same time. We then discovered that we lived within blocks of each other in the Mission back in the mid-90s and frequented the same places in San Francisco back then. We know that our paths have probably crossed numerous times in the past. Then everyone else started discussing their undergrads. As it turns out, the other new fifth grade teacher went to the same undergrad as her mentor teacher. When her mentor teacher was presenting her master's thesis at a seminar, the other teacher was present. I think it was about 9 before we parted ways. By that time we had come up with a long list of things to do on future nights. After reaching home, I fed the cats and headed to the usual place. No Grasshopper. That's OK though because I ended up meeting this really cool woman who recently broke up with her boyfriend. We talked about how it is possible to survive really tough times and come out better. Before she left, we exchanged phone numbers.

Saturday I headed out with the other fifth grade teacher to her annual family picnic. There are a number of teachers in her family so you can guess what the majority of the conversations were. Near the end of the evening, my friend mentioned to her relatives that I used to hang out in North Beach a lot. We quickly discovered that her relatives went to school with a lot of the bar owners, bartenders, and patrons with whom I used to hang out. Actually I wasn't really that surprised because there are a finite number of Catholic high schools in San Francisco. As I said to one of my co-worker's aunts, San Francisco is not really that big a city.

Today I am scoring some reading pre-assessments and marveling over how the universe has finally decided to bring us all together at this point in time. By the time we all parted ways on Friday night, we just knew that there would be something special about this school year.