Moving in the same circles

Jav and I realized early on that we spent five years of our youth at very close proximity without ever meeting. From 1976 to 1980, we lived one street over from his family. Their house backed up to the house that was across the street from us. Maybe we saw Jav or Sandra, but I don't remember it. We pretty much kept to the kids on our street, and they to theirs.

Then the other day we happened to be driving down Lancaster, which has changed so much since we were kids. My grandmother, Mom and I used to head down to our favorite shopping center several times a week in the afternoons. We would have pie or custard at Wyatt's Cafeteria, my grandmother and Mom would shop at Monnig's Department Store, and I would love walking over to Mott's Five and Dime or Skillern's Drug Store. Sometimes we'd go to Cloth World to look at patterns or thread or buttons.

I was relaying all of this nostalgia to Jav, and he remembered that his Mom used to take Sandra and he to the same stores in the afternoons after school. They didn't hit Wyatt's very often, but his mother would shop at Monnig's while he and Sandra goofed around in Mott's. We both reminisced about where everything was in Mott's - the toys, the baseball cards-I can remember the layout like the back of my hand. Jav also remember that he HATED having to wait for his Mom in Cloth World, the most boring place in the world to a 10-year-old boy.

We decided we just had to have been in the same place at the same time long before we ever officially met.