It's a Small World After All

I'm in the warehouse minding my own business listening to the overhead satellite speaker that looks like a flying saucer but that sounds so good. The music has to be easy to the ear so that we don't get to disturbed by it and still be able to properly function with our duties. Blue Monday by New Order is playing and I'm humming my life away... bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum.. bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum, yeah if you grew up during the 80's and you know the song then you'll agree with me that it has those many bums.

A driver comes in to make a delivery and hears me humming, "Did you use to dance Disco?" is the first thing he asked me, usually they say "Delivery" or "I have a delivery for you" or "Where do you want this?" but not this time, homey asked me if I used to go Disco dancing. Instantly out of my mouth my reply was "I still do". He said, "that song is from the 80's isn't it?" Yeap, but the song isn't really Disco although it's very danceable. I could have stopped there take care of his delivery and go on with my work but...

I had to volunteer some information. "In California I used to listen to this radio station called K-Rock also known as the Rock of the 80's and this song used to play a lot back then" I said. "Yeah, I remember" he said. "Did you used to live in California?" he asked. "Yes I did" I said I also told him that we left California for Arizona back in 1990.

It turned out that he is only two years younger than I am; we started to talk about the different Dicotheques in the L.A area. When I asked him if he ever went to Gino's he immediately knew the place I was talking about. In case you wonder, Gino's was a tiny little gay discotheque in Hollywood, but us straight guys and gal were welcome to be there. Gino's was the place for us to go and get the moves before anyone else and then once we learned the latest steps we would go to other Discotheques and claim bragging rights, as we were always ahead of the pack when it came to dancing. I grew up dancing, that's one of the reasons I also like the show "So You Think You Can Dance" so much.

So this driver already brought back so many memories of days gone by, we could have stopped there but... "So what high school did you attend in California?" he asked. I told him I went to Huntington Park High School in Huntington Park. "The one on Soto and Slauson" he asked. "That's the one," I said. Well actually I went to Huntington Park but I really was supposed to go to Jefferson High. "I went to Jefferson High," he said...

Me: No freaking way
Driver: Yeah, I met my wife there; we were high school sweet hearts.
Me: No I met mine at the disco.
Driver: Why didn't you go to Jefferson?
Me: I was tired of looking over my shoulder
Driver: What do you mean?
Me: I went to John Adams Jr. High in L.A. and...
Driver: I went to John Adams; I used to live two blocks away near the milk plant.
Me: Knudsen
Driver: Yeah, that one except now it's been turned into a school.
Me: Wow
Driver: Do you remember being jumped in the tunnel?
(You must know that back in 1973 my neighborhood was 95% black and 5% Mexican)
Me: Hell yes, after the first time we never crossed that stupid tunnel alone.
(To go from the classrooms to the PE area you had to cross Broadway Street and since the school is fenced, there was a tunnel to cross to the other side.)
Driver: It's still there and it still sees plenty of fights.

So his delivery time extended itself to over an hour, it seemed that every comment we made we had something in common. Being from the same neighborhood we knew the same places, grew up listening to the same music, cruise the same boulevards and had tacos from King Taco. It is a small world indeed, a conversation that lasted just a little over an hour brought back years of memories.

To say goodbye he told me his name, the funny thing was that his last name is Figueroa the same as my second last name. I don't know if I will see him again, he was just covering for our regular driver but I thought it pretty amazing how a meeting that was just by chance turned out to be so in sync.

It's a small world indeed.