It is in Fact a Bafflingly Small World After All

The most notable part of the first week of my new job happened on Tuesday afternoon: A middle-aged woman who works a couple of cubicles away from me comes over to my desk, looking sort of wound up, and asks me whether I'm from Pittsburgh. I say yes, wondering what kind of local connection would be worth getting excited about, or would attract the small party of her work-friends who I notice are observing us from a little ways away. (Steelers fandom, maybe? Later I learn she is the person who plastered Steelers stickers all around the office during the Super Bowl run, but it shouldn't warrant that much attention, especially during the offseason.)

It turns out that she was our uncle's first wife. She recognized my last name when it popped up in the company IM system. Mutual surprise. She tells me my parents will verify it if I don't believe her. I can recognize her in retrospect, though, from the very few pictures of her that went into our parents' photo albums prior to her departing the family record entirely in the early 80s. Surprise drifts into territory more like perplexed shock. News travels quickly over the tops of cubicle walls. Minor office hubbub ensues.

It settled down fast enough by the next day, with her just jokingly calling me "ex-nephew" now and then and tacking up a Steelers bumper sticker over my desk. But that's my new high-water mark for office oddities. The actual mathematical odds must be better than you would think, but still: Finding an inter-generational, family-related connection among roughly 100 employees in the one of Northern Virginia's myriad little tech companies that I happen to work for now? The mind reels.