Walt Disney was right: "It's a small world after all..."

Rain for most of the day today, so my next-door neighbor "V" had cabin fever. Her good friend from college is visiting her this week, so she called to ask if she could bring her over here for a tour of our home. "V" is always bringing her house-guests here for 'a tour.' Especially during Christmas, but any other time of the year is also subject to the tour. I don't know how this started with "V" but she comes in here looking to see what's new or what has been re-arranged. She just seems to love antiques, and she appreciates all the Victorian touches here. I've offered to help her do the same sort of things in her home, but she refused, saying then she'd have to "take care of it all." So I guess our home gives her the thrill without the work.

"V" also pulls the weeds in my flower-beds when she's stressed out. Her oldest daughter has recently left for college, so the stress level next door is really high. I told "V" that if she doesn 't calm down soon, there won't be a weed left in all of Clear Lake. When her younger daughter started taking driver's ed, there wasn't a weed left in my flower bed closest to "V's" driveway. But before she could get to the flower bed on the other side of my yard, her daughter passed the road test and those weeds stayed put. (My theory with weeds is that if it's green, it stays, and if it has the teeniest bit of what even looks to be a bloom, then I call it a 'wildflower.')

To get back to the story... it turned out that "V's" good friend from college used to live up in NY, not far from where both my husband and I lived years ago. To add to the small-world side of this, the friend's husband went to the same high school as my husband and graduated the year before my husband. When he heard this, my husband went to one of his bookshelves and got the yearbook for that year and there in all of his long-haired 1970's glory was the friend's husband.

On top of all of that... because it was still raining and we were all still talking... "V's" friend has a long-time good friend still living in NY who works at the same library where I worked for 15 years. I asked for that person's name and was surprised because not only did I recognize the name but I distinctly remember that woman. I remember when she started working there, I remembered her husband and her kids....... and of course, my husband got the yearbook out again because the husband of that library-worker had also graduated the same year and his photo was also in the yearbook.

Now honestly, what were the chances for all of us to have found that out on this rain-soaked day in Clear Lake? I've told "V" time and again that she is a source of wonder and surprise. Maybe that's why I've never minded her request for the 'tours.' When she leaves, I'm left at the door with either a smile on my face or I'm standing there just shaking my head over one of her stories.

Her story today, by the way, was about one of her classes-- she teaches at our local high school. She keeps a few stuffed animals in her classroom, for 'teaching aids' as she calls them, since she teaches biology. Which I don't understand, being that she teaches ninth-graders, not second-graders. The stuffed animals, she said, are always in different positions when she walks into the classroom. Some of these positions are, shall we say, suggestive in a sexual way.

Now of course, it's not "V" who is artfully re-arranging the stuffed creatures, it's the students who not only are doing it but calling it to her attention when she pretends not to notice. I just cannot, for the life of me, imagine "V" in that classroom with all of those ninth-graders, trying to disentangle stuffed limbs and assorted furry body parts from embarrassing positions while remaining calm in front of her class.

But, "V" being "V," I'm sure she must handle the ninth-graders with the same motherly instinct that has successfully shaped her two well-mannered, sensible, mature daughters. Then she comes home to our quiet street and stands in my flower-beds and pulls weeds without mercy.

And heaven only knows what happened in her classroom about a week ago. I was walking my dog around the neighborhood and I spotted "V" and her dog. Only they weren't walking. Her dog was resting on a lawn two streets away from ours while "V" was knee-deep in the front flower-bed there. After I said hello, I asked her who lived in that house. "I have no idea," said she, "But their flower-beds have more weeds than yours."

True story. Now honestly--- do you think I could make this stuff up?