The World is Small, and Strangely Shaped

It's not so much that it's a small world, but that it seems to fold in on itself in some places.

Today in my facebook feed, an acquaintance posted that she had lost a dear friend. Once, we moved in much the same circles, but these days we only have a few friends in common, so I didn't think much on it.

Farther down the feed, someone with whom I share much the same relationship posted something similar. I assumed it was likely the same person, and probably no one I knew... except...

With a creeping sense of dread, I flipped over to IM, and sighed with relief to see a particular friend online... a friend who was a onetime boyfriend of the first mourning acquaintance, and is now the roommate of the second. I told him how very glad I was to know that it wasn't HIM who died.

As I related this story to my husband, as a postscript I said "Yeah, some guy who goes by Burning Dan."

"OMG, They KNOW him?" He exclaimed. Apparently, his death was big news in the entertainment world... his brother played a major supporting role in a little art film called Inception.

And now, I'm sorry my friends are mourning, but I can't help being glad that I didn't really know the guy. I may have met him at a party sometime in the last decade or so, but I don't remember. So then I'm also sad that I can't be part of the collective memory of his life... but then again, he seems to have that covered. Everyone seems to have known him BUT me.