Skeletons, Closets, and it really is a small world.

I'm sitting at one of the two lunch tables watching two guys eat chicken. A father and son, both eating chicken out of a plastic container warmed in the microwave. Picking at it like you should while eating chicken. There's not one half a napkin between them. Just rubbing their hands on their clothing, both of them. The son eating just like his daddy taught him. Oh well.

Speaking of eating chicken, or crow rather, let me tell you a story about a wife and her husband. I have been asked to change the names to protect the guilty so; we'll call her "Cathy" or "C" for short. The husband we will call "Jack" or "J" for short as well.

C owned a sports bar on Main Street in downtown... um, let's say Cheesburg, got it? It was named something like "On Lookers". J was her bartender and they obviously met and eventually, eventually, married. They now have a house and a mess of kids.

Recently C has found time to participate in some school activities and one of those activities is a play of sorts, we'll call it a play. There C met another mom who was also helping out and became friendly. Nice woman, nice kids and it is hard to meet both these days. C is happy. She likes the woman. The woman's name is Amy. C doesn't have many people she calls her friends. Let's see, there's me, I think, and maybe even my wife. There may be another one or two but they slip my mind right now.

On the day of the play J comes around to watch. This is very unusual because when it comes to school activities, that man is Houdini. J is there and after the play he comes over to the ladies and patiently waits for C to introduce him to her new friend. C does the introduction and both parties are pleasant and forthcoming with the please-to-meet-chas and so forth. Then J smiles at C in his special sort of smile he saves for rare occasions.

A few minutes later, alone, C asks J what that was all about. He just smiled again. I think one could call it a "Cheshire Cat" smile. I have seen that smile before and learned from experience that one should proceed with caution, if one is foolish enough to proceed at all. C proceeds. C asks again, a little more serious this time and J smiles and asks the woman's name again and C says,"Amy, why?"

Another Cheshire smile. He also does this thing with his eyes while he waits for you to catch up. "What's her name?"

"Amy!"

"Right, Amy"

C begins to realize, slowly, what J is getting at. C is no dummy, but there is no way, no way what she begins to realize could be true.

J just stands there. Cheshiring, if you will.

C says,"No way!"

J chuckles,"Oh yeah, way."

"That can't be the same Amy!" C says.

"It is, the same Amy," the cat says. Grinning even bigger if possible because he now has someone in there with him, you know what I mean?

"Well I have to get back to work. See you later sweetie." J says and sort of struts away.

C just stood there. Is she really friends with J's ex-girlfriend? Afraid so.

After few minutes of stunned silence while C wondered about the cosmos and the jokes it is willing to play on people, she asked Amy if she remembered J. Amy said she remembered C, but not J.

"Well, he's your ex-boy friend."

Of all people, C wonders. She really likes this woman but she used to hate her.

Later in the day, at another school event where Houdini did not show, she told me the story. She had been doing the math all afternoon trying to figure the odds of meeting a befriending the only other woman in J's life in Florida, the southeast, the entire eastern side of the country.

I am sure J is still smiling and strutting.

There are no odds C. It is a small world and the skeletons get restless in the closet. Perhaps one should take friends as they come and husbands too. Everybody has a past.