Per the last Census Bureau numbers, New York City has approximately 8.2 Million residents. For discussion’s sake an average 30 year old has approximately 50 friends and another 150 colleagues and close acquaintances. The odds do not favor the accidental encounter with someone you know, yet they happen, and they seem to happen frequently.The possibilities are 41,000 to 1.
There is actually a better chance of winning an Academy Award: 11,500 to 1.
I believe what makes these encounters possible is that New York is made up of nodes linked together by a matrix of crossroads. Inevitably, two bodies come together as they pass from point A to point B.
There have been countless meetings by chance - when I have been sitting in a café, reading a book (or studying for the A.R.E.) and a tap on the window lifts my eyes to a familiar face waving and spelling hello. It was just this past weekend that I was walking down the street doing errands when I ran across a colleague – for a moment your internal voice says, “I know that person, where do I know that person from?” and then out of your mouth, “Hey Robert, what are you doing on the West Side?” He had come to the city from New Jersey with his family to walk through the American Museum of Natural History. Even rarer, yet it happens, are the occasional encounters from someone passing through town. A few years back, on Broadway near Lincoln Center, I ran into a high school friend, someone whom I had not seen for at least 8 years. She did not know I was living in New York and of course I did not know she was traveling through. We chatted for the rest of the day right there in the street.
When I bring this concept up with friends, each and every city dweller has a story of someone they have bumped into from the present or the past.
For me, chance encounters completely make my day, and sometimes my week. They reinforce the notion that the City is not the mega-metropolis it is labeled, but a quilt of small neighborhoods woven together. Each encounter seems almost serendipitous, created to keep oneself in touch with friends and to re-enforce humanity.
It was midweek; the sun was bright and the cloud storms from the morning had pasted. Conference calls in the A.M. with contractors and a meeting with a client had put me in a funk - I had decided to take a long lunch and started walking east on 10th. Within a few blocks of my journey a friend waved, a true sight for sore eyes, an unexpected encounter that instantly put a smile on my face. Our short conversation brightened my whole day.
