Hey, It May Not Be The Cover Of Rolling Stone, But At Least It's A Middle Section From Leatherneck

 

Coincidences

 Maybe we live in a simulation or maybe so many things happen, that there are bound to be coincidences...

--When I was an undergraduate, I met a young woman in astronomy 101.  We spent a fair amount of time together, but not much happened romantically.  She liked to hold hands on long walks, we went to the movies a time or two and kissed once.  Anyways, she was a Hotel & Restaurant Management student and spent a summer in India, working at a large international hotel.

--After I graduated, I spent a year and a half living in Sun Valley.  One one of the many drives between Sun Valley and Spokane, I picked-up a hitchhiker who, I discovered later, had dropped a ball point pen in my car, which was from the Von Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe Vermont.

Also, while living in Sun Valley, I developed a deep friendship with a woman who had gotten a degree in Journalism at University of Idaho while I was in Pullman.  One of the many things I remembered was her telling me she dated a guy with the memorable last name of "Custer".  He attended WSU and they met because she spent a Summer as a lifeguard at the public pool in Pullman.  She noted that he--even though a STEM guy, could really write--which was kind of a mixed blessing since he wrote beautiful but rather mean post-break-up letters to her.  The name was familiar to me:  I took a Science Fiction lit course under the legendary Paul Brians and in this small-ish class, we would review each other's papers.  There was a Custer in the class, IIRC he was stem and he was an amazing writer!

--After Sun Valley, I returned to Pullman to prep for grad school, via a degree in Biology.  One of the first courses I took was Organic Chemistry.  It was an equipment/glassware intensive lab and each student had a row of drawers of their own stuff.  A label on a piece of glassware read "Custer".  I became friends with the Indian-American TA and through her, met my Indian-American wife.  She grew up in the Boston area, which is how we got into the vicinity of Vermont.  We got into Vermont itself because we figured that since entry-level jobs paid so little, we might as well live someplace with a lower cost of living. It happened that UVM advertised in The Boston Globe.  We ended up living in Vermont for 8 years.

The Progression of the Deck Shelter Project