Disney Was Right

by Stephanie Black

My daughter and I were standing in line at the Provo Marriott, waiting to enter the ballroom for the Whitney gala, looking all inadvertently coordinated in our matching blue and black (my daughter figures if she’d been in seventh grade, she wouldn’t have gone out in public with me like that. I mean, how embarrassing to, like, totally match your mom. But now that she’s an adult, legally speaking, she realizes that hey, Mom is the ultimate in cool, and what greater honor than to dress like her AND to have her borrow my sparkly rhinestone shoes?) (I completely fabricated part of that preceding parenthetical insertion. You can guess which part, but guess wisely, or you might hurt my feelings). Anyway, as we stood there, a woman approached me and said, “Stephanie McConkie.” I looked at her, and behold, the bells of recognition did ring, which is pretty miraculous for me, because I’m not always good at, you know, memory things, like who I met at a conference or where I parked the car. But I recognized her right away—my dear friend Jennifer James, who lived in our ward in Salt Lake when I was a teenager. My sister and I had lost touch with Jennifer years ago, but she would still come up in our conversations, and we would have loved to get in touch with her again. And here she was, walking up to me at the Whitney gala! It was an awesome it's-a-small-world moment, and the fun of that reunion became brain-fryingly cosmic when I found out that Jennifer is married to my friend Jon Spell. Here’s a picture of us at the Whitney gala:



I became cyber-acquainted with Jon a few years ago, here on the Frog Blog (um, is that how we met, Jon? About those memory issues I mentioned . . . ). I then met him in person at a booksigning in Utah. Since then, he’s test-read a couple of my manuscripts for me, and I’ve appreciated his feedback and insights. I knew his wife was named Jennifer, but naturally, it never occurred to me to wonder, hmm, I wonder if his wife could be my long-lost friend Jennifer, whom we would love to get in contact with? So to find out that “our” Jennifer had been right there all the time, married to Jon—well, I think my brain is still short-circuited with amazement and delight. It was the most epic small-world episode I’ve experienced.

It’s amazing to me how many small-world connections there are in the LDS community. I just found out that Storymakers conference chair Jaime Theler is the daughter-in-law of a couple who were in our ward when I was a child living in Arkansas (it was at the Thelers’ house where a stray bottle rocket blew up in our 4th of July cake). Rob Wells’ wife Erin is the cousin of one of my best friends from high school. Jeff Savage used to work with my aunt.

It seems like wherever we go, there are connections. I moved into our California ward to find that the Gospel Doctrine teacher was my sister's dear friend from her BYU/Houston days. My mother walked into our Boston ward to find an old friend from junior high school.

How about you? Got any fun small world stories?

(I asked my daughter about small-world stories. A few minute later, she walked in, singing, "It's a small world after all." When I started laughing, she said, "It's not funny! I'm going to have that song stuck in my head forever!" Ha ha! My work here is finished.)