Trite? It's a small world, anyway

Not as much of a shock as it might once have been   Kris, over at Anywhere But Here, revealed today that she's an OBU alum. I had wondered at what her background might have been to produce so many shared memes. Now I know part of it. Different generation, of course, but from all reports (from recent grad who once lived here at home :-) and continuing contacts over the years (including an email from a new contact, a prof in the College of Fine Arts, just the other day), much of the atmosphere and outlook remains very similar to the a&o when I attended.   But the small world effect?  Well, ever since 1971, when I spent a summer touring darned near all the contiguous 48 and found OBU alum in every single state I visited that summer, the small world effect is more of a "Huh, that's nice: add another one" than a shock.  For a school that hovers around a 2,000 enrollment and had, at the last graduation I attended (2003) fewer in the graduating class than were in my high school's graduating class, it's sometimes surprisingly easy to make contact with previously unknown OBU alums, nearly anywhere... but here, in America's Third World County™.